Universities can be the engine of urban renewal and development

Finally, universities are pioneers in some neighbourhoods spurring other private investment to overlooked areas with unique assets on the spine of the urban transportation network. As many US planners have discovered it is not enough to promote new mixed use of commercial shops on the ground floors and residents above in distressed communities. There is a need for magnet institutions to be placed in these communities such as regional arts, science or similar facilities. The Lawrence Berkeley Environmental Science Labs on the edge of a depressed area in Oakland, California brings university and government officials from around the world to its offices with ancillary attraction of new restaurants and new housing proposed to serve the area along with new business queuing up to locate near this science hub.

Very simply put no distressed community will attract new economic activity until it is made attractive by some form of magnet economic entity that the rest of the region, the nation or the world needs. Thus, university centres located off the campus in critical neighbourhoods that have the transportation and other resources in them create the right mixture for real urban renewal with new good jobs for local residents. Obviously, the university and the state government have to be partners in these relocations or new locations as well as engaging training or retraining the local workforce for the new jobs.

In my examination of the research on uwith community support university urban renewal efforts, I found that that these university community renewal approaches have several things in common. They all recognise the new role of the university as an economic and social agent. Furthermore they view the entire metropolitan area as their campus and not just their current university holdings.

Directions for Sydney’s Universities, the State and National Governments
Urban revitalisation is critical to the future of Sydney. Most of the population increases we will experience will come from local youngsters growing up and starting families, combined with migration from other states and modest international immigration along with the ageing of the existing population.

The key to servicing population is a new planning process to harness the human resources in the existing communities we already have with modest new community building. These human resources in good knowledge-resourced communities will generate our new economic activity on the existing land base. We can increase their productivity by improving the livability and the economic viability of our neighbourhoods. Balancing job growth in the existing neighbourhoods of Central Sydney, the inner ring suburbs, the Western suburbs, the Illawara and the Hunter along with improving our suburban land use pattern is critical to the success of the region.

We are blessed in Sydney with a remarkable set of high quality universities with exceptional faculties. Our Sydney universities will continue to produce good scholarship and good students from the region and abroad. We must expand our university missions as economic engines for the revitalisation of the total community. We need our universities across the region from Wollongong to Newcastle to lead urban renewal efforts by assigning a senior level Pro Vice Chancellor to assist in the development of new active investment roles in affordable housing, community education, arts and community creative enterprise formation near and far from the central campus settings. For our universities to play these new risky roles we will need active State and Commonwealth support similar to the US University-City Partnership schemes that provide financial and government involvement in such ventures.

Sydney’s future is as a Learning Region that leaves no one behind as we reach our global ambition - that’s the plan and strategy that will take us to the 22nd century. Our universities hold the keys to this strategy.