The University, Neighborhood Revitalization, and Civic Engagement: Toward Civic Engagement three point zero.

The University, Neighborhood Revitalization, and Civic Engagement: Toward Civic Engagement three point zero.

Abstract: This essay analyzes and synthesizes key theories and concepts on neighborhood change from the literature on anchor institutions, university engagement, gentrification, neighborhood effects, Cold War, Black liberation studies, urban political economy, and city building. To deepen understanding of the Columbia University experience, we complemented the literature analysis with an examination of the New York Times and Amsterdam newspapers from nineteen fifty to nineteen seventy. The study argues that higher education's approach to neighborhood revitalization during the urban renewal age, as well as in the post-nineteen ninety period, produced undesirable results and failed to spawn either social transformation or build the neighborly community espoused by Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy. The essay explains the reasons why and concludes with a section on a more robust strategy higher education can pursue in the quest to bring about desirable change in the university neighborhood.

One. Introduction

This essay analyzes and synthesizes key theories and concepts on neighborhood change from the literature on anchor institutions, university engagement, gentrification, neighborhood effects, Cold War, Black liberation studies, urban political economy, and city building. To deepen understanding of neighborhood revitalization and the Columbia University experience, the literature analysis was complemented by an examination of the New York Times and Amsterdam newspapers from nineteen fifty to nineteen seventy. The intent was to deepen understanding of the strategies universities used to "revitalize" their host neighborhoods and to gain insight into why these "revitalization" strategies chronically produced undesirable outcomes. Town and gown is a phrase often used to describe the relationship between universities and their host community; throughout this essay, the "town and gown" phrase is used interchangeably with university-host community relations. During the post-war era, it is theorized that the break-up of the colonial world combined with the dynamics of a rising knowledge economy to catalyze the Cold War, the Second Great Black Migration, the contemporary Black liberation movement, and the building of the knowledge city. The interaction among these socioeconomic factors fundamentally changed the context in which universities grew and developed.

In this new setting, university leaders, in partnership with local government and the private sector, used an urban renewal strategy, along with a market-driven model of neighborhood development to recreate the university neighborhood. In this approach, the market is allowed to develop unfettered, while placing profit-making and university expansion over the needs of low-income residents. This method of recreating the university neighborhood produced undesirable results. The Black urban rebellions of the nineteen sixties and the Black revolutionary activities on campuses in the nineteen seventies interrupted this university-led neighborhood revitalization strategy.

Later in the nineteen nineties, now operating within the engaged university framework, higher education institutions implemented a similar, yet more comprehensive, but equally flawed market-driven model of neighborhood revitalization. The essay concludes by arguing that to realize its potential, the engaged university must learn from past mistakes and implement, what we call, university engagement "three point zero." The "three point zero movement" seeks to build the neighborly community by integrating physical and social development, placing people above the market, and infusing nonmarket elements into market dynamics so as to moderate and reduce its undesirable effect on neighborhood development.