Report Card Grades Urban Universities on Community Development, Engagement

Photos By: Andrew Higley/Michael Romanos

  

Nearly 20 years ago, the University of Cincinnati began a project – its campus master plan – that represented the move of a century for the institution. It was an on-campus revamp that, quite frankly, redefined campus planning on an international scale. Several books have been written about or have included UC’s master plan while international and national media have chronicled the plan’s unfolding.

Aerial of UC's campus.

That success on campus starkly outlined a campus-community disparity: Architectural jewels on campus that drew international press and visitors set amidst a wider community neighborhood experiencing decline in terms of safety and the urban environment (housing stock in poor condition, deteriorating commercial zone and other social ills).

The neighborhood setting – in an area broadly known as Uptown – affected not only the university but four other major employers in the city, who collectively represented five of the top ten largest employers in the region, not to mention the residents of seven neighborhoods.

In response, the City of Cincinnati, the neighborhood associations and the employers (UC, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens, the Health Alliance and TriHealth) eventually formed the Uptown Consortium to guide an ongoing series of redevelopment initiatives.

Graph from the special report.

To gauge consortium efforts and to learn from peer urban/metropolitan universities engaged in similar efforts, UC commissioned what is believed to be the first broad attempt to “grade” such efforts throughout the United States and Canada. The just-completed multi-year study, “Community Interactions and Collaborations: Peer Institutional Study,” is being released by three UC planning faculty – Michael Romanos, professor of planning; Mahyar Arefi, associate professor of planning; and David Edelman, director of UC’s top-ranked School of Planning.

The report includes 21 case studies detailing university efforts, as well as a detailed report card of 11 of those universities across 16 criteria, including 

• Avoidance of use of municipal eminent domain powers
• Community participation in development decision making and planning
• Economic impact
• Environment and sustainable development
• Financial commitment
• Historic preservation
• Increased housing supply
• Leadership (how top-level was the effort)
• Partnerships with other institutions
• Safety
• Success in meeting defined targets
• Urban design

The “case study” universities included in the study are

• University of Cincinnati*
• University of Akron*
• Boston College University
• Duke University*
• Georgia Tech University*
• Johns Hopkins University
• Louisiana State University*
• McGill University
• Ohio State University*
• San Diego State University
• Simon Fraser University*
• University of British Columbia*
• University of California at Los Angeles*
• University of California, San Diego*
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• University of Louisville
• University of Pennsylvania*
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Southern California*
• University of Victoria
• University of Wisconsin

(* Denotes universities receiving a “grade.”)

The study revealed that, on the whole, these universities’ community engagement/partnership activities could be classified broadly into four categories: Knowledge generation (research, data collection, experimentation); Collaborative studies (for educational or research purposes to benefit the local community); Community involvement (activities by faculty or students with active participation from the community and to benefit the community); and Area redevelopment (real estate rehabilitation, redevelopment, campus expansion or community enhancement).

• Read a summary of the report card
• Read the entire report (This is a large PDF file requiring Adobe Acrobat.)
• Overview of Cincinnati partnership projects

 

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