Historically, the definition of the University is inevitably dynamically changed by the theories, culture and social perspectives of different times. The university in the 21st century has an obvious tendency to much more flexible, integrated and most importantly, civic. This paper firstly clarifies the definition of the university; then the relationships between the university and the city are discussed. Thirdly, the civic university in U.K and U.S are separately reviewed. Lastly, the trend of the university—civic—is summarised and the future work on how to make high density university in 21st century increasingly civic is proposed.