Funding mechanisms are a critical, though rarely discussed, component of university interventions. This section provides some insight into the sources and patterns of funding employed for housing, commercial and economic development activities. Collectively, universities primarily funded their revitalization efforts with operating funds, followed by university financing and/or grants (Figure 3.14). Endowments, contrary to what one might expect, were often not a major source of capital. Meanwhile, “other” sources of funding included private investments—often leveraged development projects, loans from endowment funds, or dedicated community investment funds.
Stratifying responses by institutional sector and revitalization category reveals variations in funding strategies (Figures 3.15, 3.16, and 3.17). Private universities were more likely to leverage operating funds for their projects than public institutions. They were also more likely to draw from multiple resources to fund housing or commercial projects. For instance, private universities relied on one to five sources of funding for housing revitalization initiatives, averaging 2.75 sources, including operating funds, financing, and gifts. In contrast, public universities used one to four sources, averaging 2.6, with an emphasis on operating funds and university financing. For commercial investments, private institutions drew upon one to three sources, averaging 1.6, including operating funds and financing; public institutions accessed one to two sources and, primarily, university financing.
Figure 3.16 University funding sources for commercial activities by sector
Figure 3.17 University funding sources for economic development activities by sector
Economic development activities did suggest a different trend. Here, public universities leveraged multiple sources of funding—an average of 2.5—and were more
likely to be driven by grants, followed by matching funds. Private institutions were more focused, using one to two sources of funding and, principally, operating funds, which reflects their focus on procurement, contracting, and hiring.
3.5 Implications and Conclusion
The survey findings underscore the importance of place for 21st century universities. Though their strategies varied widely, all universities self-identified as active participants in neighborhood revitalization. For many, the neighborhood represented a value-added condition that enabled the university to establish a “sense of place” or a “destination” for university constituents—students, parents, faculty, and staff. Yet, the institutional embrace did not necessarily imply a mutualistic relationship between town and gown. Rather, the survey results suggest universities approach neighborhood revitalization as an asset and academic learning investment, leveraging the tools that are most readily available to them.
While all universities reported investments in neighborhood revitalization, community service and volunteerism was the most frequent activity, reflecting a long- held tradition of civic engagement by universities. These activities often include academically-based community service courses, which integrate community based research into student learning, or university requirements for student volunteer activities. They are often an important part of an institution’s mission to engender civic responsibility among their student body. With deep roots in higher education
philosophy, community service activities are most likely to focus on people-based issues, such as education, poverty, or health, and incorporate a social justice framework. Civic engagement programming, however, rarely extends to community development efforts that might change the socioeconomic fortunes of a neighborhood. Instead, civic engagement projects are often criticized for their lack of community benefit. Some neighborhoods lament the imbalance of these efforts, where university faculty or students mine a place for its research value but do not provide the community with anything it can use in return. Others point to the fleeting commitment of civic engagement projects, which are not present long enough to sustain change. In their current format, these types of activities rarely generate the kinds of transformative impacts required for neighborhood revitalization, nor do they effectively address issues of place.
The vast majority of universities engaged in the primary neighborhood revitalization activities—housing, commercial, and economic development, relied on their asset management skill sets to fulfill university-driven consumer demand. Universities with established, oft-cited neighborhood revitalization strategies tended to have clearer programs and geographic boundaries, while others were looser in their interpretation of revitalization activities. On average, major research and large universities—those enrolling 10,000 or more students—were most likely to participate in the post-1990 approach to revitalization, with private major research universities playing the most active and diversified roles.
As large institutions, these universities have a natural affinity for managing real estate and project development, as well as physical planning. As a result, universities were most likely to use property development to catalyze change in the real estate market. University investments in real estate often responded to deficits in the commercial corridors surrounding the corridors. In many of these cases, universities were not the principal investors in a project, but leveraged their land holdings to incentivize private actors to invest. Through long-term land leases, institutions were able to attract capital to the neighborhood, offsetting some of the investor risk, and manage the land uses. Led by an institution’s desire to create a destination, real estate investments targeted a mix of retail, entertainment, and student-focused apartment complexes.
In contrast, few universities made significant investments in projects or programs that targeted neighborhood needs, such as housing affordability protections, rehabilitation efforts, workforce development programs, or employment opportunities. Where they did invest in non-development revitalization, institutions were inconsistent in their application of terms—especially in the economic development category. For instance, the “workforce development” category was selected to describe job training programs, as well as a workforce development “newspaper,” run by students and designed to increase community awareness of many issues including job openings. Similarly, some universities described “local procurement” efforts that directed dollars to businesses within the university’s zip code, while others referenced state mandates to purchase from vendors located in the region or the state.
The difficulty with inconsistent definitions of revitalization is not that some institutions are investing in the “right” activities, while other universities are pursuing the “wrong” ones. Neighborhood revitalization interventions are complex, influenced by physical conditions, local and university politics, and town-gown relations, among other factors. Further, university responsibilities and interests are varied. Their fiduciary responsibilities and educational missions must be balanced with the need to protect their institutional brands—a critical component of attracting and retaining students, faculty and staff—and commitments to their neighborhoods, cities, and/or the public good. However, the lack of consistency in university definitions of and/or metrics for neighborhood revitalization makes the work of evaluating initiatives and extracting best practices or policy lessons much more challenging.
The lack of standardized definitions or conceptions of neighborhood revitalization initiatives also represents a limitation in the survey data, as well as a finding unto itself. University responses to the survey were limited by their own perceptions of the work. As mentioned, some institutions defined their efforts broadly, citing a number of community service activities and citywide initiatives that reached beyond the specifications of the survey question. Yet, in other instances, a respondent chose to define the university’s work narrowly, focusing on one aspect of the university’s investments—perhaps the projects they were most familiar with—and neglecting to mention other investments or programs all together. For instance, Syracuse University emphasized its off-campus student housing development, faculty and staff homeownership incentives, and workforce development programs in the
survey; they did not, however, mention any of the programs or development associated with their Near West Side Initiative, a celebrated comprehensive revitalization intervention initiated by the former Chancellor of the university.
Taken together, the survey findings suggest a gap between people and place. In the post-1990 era, universities recognize the contributions of place to their institutional success and future. Yet, the people in those places do not appear to have a prominent role in the way universities conceive of revitalization. Real estate development dominates university strategies and those projects frequently contribute to an institutional appetite for restaurants, retail, entertainment, and/or apartment choices. While both of those trends leverage the skills and interests at the forefront of university planning, they do so in a way that largely creates an imbalance between town and gown benefit.
This imbalance foreshadows an important question: if universities are facilitating private development in the name of neighborhood revitalization and the university population is the primary beneficiary, is this a new form of market-based urban renewal? The answer is not a simple or obvious one. At present, however, university reliance on real estate development to catalyze change suggests that institutions are not harnessing the full strength of their special skills—as employers, economic generators, and civic-minded institutions—to ensure that neighborhood transformation is both vibrant and equitable. The subsequent chapters explore the implications of the town-gown gap further by, first, evaluating if neighborhoods actually changed in
response to university investments and, second, considering three different instances of change through in-depth case studies.
CHAPTER 4.CHANGING COMMUNITIES? THE IMPACT OF