Gregory Trencher and Masaru Yarime, writing in OurWorld2.0, a publication of United Nations University, provide a call for more town and gown collaboration and partnerships for area sustainable development. They also provide a nice list of some current projects that fit into their category of "Universities Co-Creating Urban Sustainability." That list, with links, is below—after the quote, which is the first two paragraphs of their essay:

The sustainability crisis has provoked an unexpected and dramatic response from academia. Until now, higher education institutions have tended to focus on sustainability within their own borders. This has predominantly been via sustainability education, research and designing green or carbon neutral campuses. Yet borders between society and academia are dissolving. Many high-profile universities across the world are reaching out past campus boundaries to form ambitious partnerships with industry, government and civil society organisations. In this role of ‘co-creation’, a university attempts to materialise sustainable development by working with society, to create society. That is, it collaborates with diverse social actors to trigger and then drive the sustainable transformation of a specific region, city or community.

Table 1. Various cross-sector collaborations for sustainability transitions

 A 'WorldWise' blog post at The Chronicle regarding the University of Arizona's support of its larger community earlier this month, and similar roles that other institutions play around the world in times of crisis:

I just couldn’t bring myself to grips with all that has happened in Tucson surrounding the shootings, without the university and its reinforced role as “glue” for the community. Crises that are due to a natural disaster, a pandemic, or the one which has recently taken place in Tucson provide good examples of the transcendent role that higher-education institutions can and must play. Fortunately, there have been many examples from around the world of this type of additional critical role that higher-education institutions and their leaders assume. That’s what happened on the island of Penang, Malaysia, when the Universiti Sains-Malaysia provided expertise and volunteer work for the reconstruction efforts after the tsunami devastated the region, or what happened in Mexico during the confusion generated by the H1N1 virus outbreak during which the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi served as a trusted source of information for the community, or what happened in Chile when the few buildings which remained standing at the University of Talca or those at University of Bio-Bio became community shelter centers. The list goes on and on.

Interesting concept: Redfields to Greenfields. Could your institution find some value in turning formerly densely-populated urban areas into green spaces?

In the language of urbanism, “greenfields” usually means rural land at the metropolitan edge, where suburbia metastasizes. “Brownfields” are former industrial sites that could be redeveloped once they are cleaned of pollution. “Greyfields” — picture vast empty parking lots — refer to moribund shopping centers.

Recently another such locution was coined: “redfields,” as in red ink, for underperforming, underwater and foreclosed commercial real estate. Redfields describe a financial condition, not a development type. So brownfields and greyfields are often redfields, as are other distressed, outmoded or undesirable built places: failed office and apartment complexes, vacant retail strips and big-box stores, newly platted subdivisions that died aborning in the crash.

Now comes “Redfields to Greenfields,” a promising initiative aimed at reducing the huge supply of stricken commercial properties while simultaneously revitalizing the areas around them.

Initiatives in both Pittsburgh (PA) and Providence (RI) by local government, to get assistance with their budget deficits by "taxing" tuition (Pittsburgh) or imposing an annual $300 fee (Providence) were harbingers of a trend. The idea that in these economic times educational institutions which do not pay taxes should help more is a popular one. Ron Schachter has written an article in University Business magazine that will bring you completely up to date with the trend and what has happened since the proposals were first made. Did you know about Boston?

Boston institutions also are taking stock of and quantifying their contributions to the surrounding community, since they can deduct a portion from the newly increased amount they will owe this year under the new PILOT agreement. In the case of Wentworth Institute of Technology, those off-campus contributions range from providing volunteer activities to clean up the surrounding streets to more involved service learning projects.

“For one project,” points out Wentworth President Zorica Pantic, “our students designed a Wi-Fi network for a local depressed neighborhood and helped them get the funding to run it.” Payments in Lieu of Taxes in the Future Interest in collecting payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) from higher ed institutions and other nonprofits is likely to grow as cash-strapped municipalities seek additional revenue. How can cities and towns collaborate with colleges about the payments to ensure greater consistency and transparency? Read here.

Pantic is hoping that those services will count against the $700,000 annual PILOT bill Wentworth is scheduled to pay, an order of magnitude greater than the $40,000 the school gave the city in 2010. “We can live with it,” she says of the increased contribution, “although it’s helpful that it’s going to be phased in over five years. We’ve already put it in our five-year budget plan.”

In Change magazine's current issue, John Seely Brown, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, and Richard Adler, examine the role of land-grant universities and their part in the "now" and the "future." While keeping a very broad perspective, they eventually examine as a case study North Carolina State University, its Centennial Campus, and review a number of learning and research initiatives, such as: Red Hat Software, MedWestvaco, and NC Textile Connect - digging even deeper into some of the latter's projects: William Shinn's Aorta, Mansour Mohammed's process, LAAMScience and APJet - as well as the North Carolina Program for Forensic Science.

In search of new models of learning for the 21st century, we visited North Carolina State University, a 120-year-old land-grant institution located in Raleigh, North Carolina. NC State provides some interesting clues about how America's land-grant colleges and universities might reinvent their mission for the 21st century. While initiatives similar to the ones at NC State can be found at other institutions, the school is worth studying because of its relatively long history of innovation and its commitment to expanding the meaning of “engagement.”

NC State has developed a reputation for pioneering an expanded definition of the university around the concept of actively engaging with the larger community and the regional economy. The pursuit of greater engagement has inspired the development of new academic practices that blend old and new forms of learning—practices that honor both the traditional transmission of codified knowledge and new forms of knowledge building through inquiry, speculation, and problem-solving.

This “blended” model of education is the foundation of an ecosystem in which students and faculty operate in the territory between the intellectual activity associated with the academy's imperative to ask questions in a manner that does not typically happen elsewhere and the pragmatism necessary to create impact in real-world settings. This is a complex territory, because it is often conflictive by nature. Yet it is precisely in the negotiation of conflicts that resiliency is formed.

[T]he widely acclaimed East College Street Project … blends apartments and retail shops with street-smart, environmentally friendly architecture.

The $17 million development grew out of an unusual partnership: Three friends decided to stick around after graduating and change their college town for the better -- even though they knew nothing about real estate at the time….

The project precedes a larger development to come: Oberlin College's $300 million, 13-acre Green Arts District, which will include construction or renovation of a dozen buildings between East College Street at the Allen Memorial Art Museum a block to the north.

If you find this item to be of interest, then you need to be checking out SCUP's Pacific Region's annual conference next spring: Inspiring Community, March 21–23, 2011 at Seattle University.

Consider the case of Lowell, Mass., located on the banks of the Merrimack and Concord rivers and once coined mill city. Named as one of five “innovative cities” by the Innovative Cities consortium, the City of Lowell’s dramatic reversal of fortune was driven by lean manufacturing and, significantly, a robust appetite for commercial and retail development, cultural diversity, and community engagement. The key ingredient in Lowell was that business and civic leaders united behind a co-development strategy, attracted investment from outside the community and leveraged capital financing for building out town/gown infrastructure, like sports stadiums, residential commons, and state-of-the-art student fitness and recreation centers.

A recent USA Today feature reported on two types of recession-proof economies: the first, state capitals and the second, collegetowns. In these latter cities, higher education institutions created transportation linkages, river walks, bike paths and pedestrian pathways to guide, inform, and enhance the urban life experience. Increasingly, Americans are seeking out these river mill collegetowns as powerful options for retail, hospitality, and ecotourism investment and as wise choices to live, learn, start a business and raise a family. This new wave of urban homesteaders has learned that collegetowns are now lifelong destinations and more than temporary undergraduate residences.

This link may require a Chronicle log-in after a few days.

A nice piece from Lawrence Biemiller at The Chronicle. He points out that all the campus damage donw by Katrina added up to just over $1B, but the damage to the University of Iowa from flooding was estimated at $734M - but we don't hear nearly as much about U Iowa. He finds that the disaster has given the university an opportunity to rethink its overall campus plan:

There's a silver lining, though: The flood has given the university the chance to rethink some poor decisions made decades ago. The School of Music, which was relocated from the riverbank to temporary quarters in a down-on-its-luck downtown mall, liked the location so much that it will move to a new facility bridging a major downtown street. City and university officials hope that will make the downtown livelier and attract new audiences for music-school performances. Part of the School of Art will move into a new building designed to encourage collaboration among artists in different media, who say that sharing temporary digs in a former big-box store has been unexpectedly energizing. As it has in New Orleans, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will eventually pick up much of the tab for repairs here, covering 90 percent of costs that are judged as eligible for reimbursement. Related Content Slide Show: U. of Iowa Buildings Affected by the 2008 Flood Enlarge ImageLiz Martin for The ChronicleTwo years after floods destroyed arts and music buildings at the U. of Iowa, a university band rehearses in an Iowa City church hall. Enlarge ImageLiz Martin for The ChroniclePresident Sally K. Mason walks near the U. of Iowa's 2006 Art Building West, which FEMA designated as architecturally significant, allowing money for its restoration. Enlarge ImageLiz Martin for The ChronicleCharles Swanson is executive director of Hancher Auditorium, a performing-arts center that was ruined by the floods. The replacement building will seek platinum-level LEED certification.

"There are great opportunities that have come from the disaster," President Mason says. "You grow from these things." She was told when she was hired, she says, not to expect to do a lot of building. Instead, she'll oversee high-profile construction projects—a music school, an arts building, a major auditorium, and possibly a museum—with architects who have international reputations.

 Humor from David Galef in Inside Higher Ed:

When U of All People was founded back in 1970 (briefly losted in the foreclosure of 1987), little thought was given to its surroundings, the sleepy hamlet of Ennyville -- primarily because there was no Ennyville. The university itself emerged on 150 acres of reclaimed swampland, a federal land grant only in the sense that the government wanted to distance itself from a toxic sludge event that at the time was termed “accident at the plant.” But as the university grew from pontoons and quonset huts to potholed paths and faux Gothic halls in dire need of repair, the blind forces of capitalism have seen to the birth and growth of the town.

Ennyville started in 1975 with Sleep Here, a forty-room flea lodge built to accommodate the families of graduating students, campus guests, and sordid trysts. From there, it was a short series of steps to enterprises such as Mart’s Fuel Mart (“We’ll give you gas”) and Main Street Movie Theater (now Main Event, a performance space whose latest show was devoted to foot flogging, linked to the university art department). For obvious reasons, Ennyville has a close relationship to U of All People, or, as biology professor Jen Edix describes it, “the parasitism that exists between a nematode and the human intestine.” Other faculty have been less kind in their assessments. Yet Ennyville is careful to preserve a traditional college town air, if only to attract those at U of All People who consider themselves traditional or collegiate.

This Boston Globe article by Robert Gavin includes a video interview with University of Massachusetts president Jack M. Wilson, which begins with him talking about the $1.9B of building the university has done in the last few years.

Underlying all the construction is the university’s growth. State funding pays for 14 percent of this year’s $2.8 billion budget, down from 28 percent a little more than a decade ago. But since 2003, enrollment has risen nearly 15 percent systemwide, to about 66,000 students, while revenue from tuition, fees, and other non-state sources has doubled to $2.3 billion. Federal and corporate funding of UMass research has jumped 50 percent to nearly $500 million last year. Fees from licensing technologies developed at UMass nearly quadrupled to more than $70 million.

Just as important has been a cultural shift borne of dwindling state support. University officials say, they have had to take an entrepreneurial approach to make the most of available resources.