Ties between urban universities and local communities pay off

ALTHOUGH THE TRADITIONAL strains between town and gown have been diminishing for some time, few would have predicted the enthusiastic relationships that exist today between many urban universities and their surrounding neighborhoods.

Marcia Marker Feld, professor of community planning at the University of Rhode Island, attributes increased interest in urban revitalization and community partnerships to the ascendancy of 1960s activists who are now running college and university urban-planning programs. Feld, who was the founding director of the Office of University Partnerships in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), vigorously justifies universitycommunity involvement, explaining that institutions of higher education, especially land-grant colleges and universities, have a moral commitment to serve their communities.

HUD created the Office of University Partnerships in 1994 to recognize and build on successful examples of university activity in local revitalization projects. The office aims to persuade urban scholars to focus their work on housing and community-development policy, and it seeks partnerships with other federal agencies to support innovative teaching, research, and service partnerships. More than seventy universities now participate in the office's five programs, and grant funds are available. Details about the programs can be found on the Web at .

"Originally, urban revitalization was a marginal issue, even in the field of urban planning," Feld says. "And because much of our work is in applied research and outreach, faculty can have tenure and promotion difficulties. I was fortunate because my dean strongly supports our program."

Kenneth Reardon, professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, explains that the interdisciplinary aspect of the work can make obtaining tenure harder. "UIUC established an interdisciplinary advisory board for our outreach projects that has recognized the scholarship and research associated with the projects for tenure and promotion," he reports.

David Cox, professor of political science and codirector of the Center for Urban Research and Extension at the University of Memphis, adds that in the years after World War II, the academy did not view the linkage of outreach and applied research as central to its mission. "Today," Cox says, "a critical and central body of people are increasingly seeing our work as scholarship. But those of us engaged in this work must be responsible for creating applied and theoretical written work."

Reardon reports that UIUC has participated in a major communitydevelopment program in East St. Louis, an economically deprived area, since 1987. The program started off with only a handful of students, but now five hundred students in six departments contribute. All of the program's efforts, which include rehabilitating old housing, building new homes, and creating playgrounds, were identified by local leaders. The UIUC-East St. Louis partnership has brought $30 million in development funds into the city.

Reardon stresses that the program transforms the lives of many of the student participants, most of whom are middle class with little urban experience; it forces them to grapple with unexamined racial, class, and gender stereotypes. Engagement with the community also bolsters students' intellectual growth, says Cox. "My students are stimulated to apply real-life problems to theory," Cox explains, "but then they go beyond classroom theory and add to it. It's a wonderful experience to see this happen."

The UIUC program has had an effect on the career choices of students, Reardon reports. "In 1990, only 10 percent of our students were interested in entering urban planning; today, 75 percent of them intend to work in the field. Working with committed community leaders over time makes a difference," he contends.

Patricia Torres-Garrett, assistant director for community liaison at the Center for Urban Initiatives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, says that both town and gown profit from urban partnerships. "The community benefits from having a diverse group of people working on urban revitalization issues," she says, "and the university exposes its students to careers in urban and regional planning."