Collaboration: City and University working together?

Planning is all about partnerships that link common goals and visions together into a coherent plan or set of guidelines towards development of city and neighborhoods. Universities are the ones who should be bringing these partnerships together since they are some of the only places that have access to knowledge that is multidisciplinary and already “together” in a group. The group of course being the university itself. With all of the academic departments at a typical major research university there should be no question as to the ability of a university, such as University of Memphis, to act as an engine for economic as well as social growth in a city or town. Our work in the Vance Ave neighborhood is an example of university collaboration to bring about a positive change in a neighborhood torn by cyclical poverty and a drug problem that pulls the whole neighborhood down. We are working with two departments, CRP and Anthropology, and while this is a good start I often wonder, why architecture isn’t involved or why can’t economics, business, history, or geography be a part of this effort as well. Other departments like the ones listed above are needed to provide an extra point of view at the table and to bring their specific expertise to a project could have enormous impact on Memphis and the Vance Avenue neighborhood for decades to come. We as planners don’t have all of the answers and we might see a problem one way but someone from another department could see it from a different angle and provide a better solution that we could or would.

Universities in the past have been mostly places for the rich or elite to go and get an education before they went into the family business or some other enterprise and they were not places were anyone could go and try to better themselves and raise their own position in our society. Traditionally the schools have tried to distance themselves from the problems that surround their campuses like poverty, crime, drug abuse and poor access to services. This has since changed somewhat in that more schools are looking around their campus and saying that there are some issues here that need to be resolved. More and more the university is taking a more proactive role in effecting that change and I’m not so sure that their motives are as pure as they might make us think. Like any business it’s all about money and universities are no exception. While the schools themselves might be not for profit there is still an intense competition between schools for the top students, athletes and professors and this means that in order to attract the tops from those groups a school must be appealing in all aspects. Some aspects that planning and planners can affect are campus integration with the neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods themselves. These two things are really important when prospective students come to look at a university.

A family flies into Memphis and they pick up their rental car and drive to campus, the most direct route is Airways Blvd to Central Ave. Central Ave is very visually appealing to them because it has nice houses and green lawns but Airways is another matter entirely. Rundown and vacant buildings dominate the route and homeless and poverty stricken people are readily apparent and numerous. Now where planning comes in is trying to “solve” the problems of homelessness and poverty by bringing jobs and social services to the area and enforcing a building and design code that makes the area more appealing in general. In the October Issue of Planning Magazine there is an article about how universities are helping their community with its problems and issues by combining the expertise available in a university setting. Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Idaho are two of the examples they give of schools partnering with the community to improve the locale. They are applying creative solutions to community issues such as proposing a former grain silo being redeveloped into a downtown hotel. Other schools are focusing on bringing people together that have common interests and goals to breed a climate of cooperation and collaboration in an arena that hasn’t always been willing to work together and facilitate an environment that works for all citizens.