University Towns

University towns are valuable commodities in the city branding stakes.  Songjiang University City leads the pack, with a multi-university core.
But is the “town-and-gown” the future or the immediate past?

Universities, far from being unitary wholes, began as assemblages of colleges, each with their discreet curriculum and own physical grounds.  They were associated only for the conferral of degrees.  They taught the cutting edge fields of their day, beginning with theology (beginning with the madrasah of Al Karaouine), law and medicine, but as these degrees were formalised, failed to adapt to “new” fields such as engineering.  Enter the Polytechnic.  Napoleon founded the first Ecole Polytechnique in 1794 to train mathematicians, military engineers and scientists, it was, as the name means, the “school of many arts” - not confined to any one field, building on the advances of one discipline in many others.  Thus Fourrier  advanced mathematics, and also heat flow and acoustics, and Arago contibuted to astronomy, optics and electricity.

The two ideas diverged and converged with the industrial revolution.  The polytechnique became synonymous with technical trades, particularly engineering, after its explosive growth, and remain the basis for specialist trade schools of today.  Conversely universities embraced the idea of “many arts”, expanding their scope to include new fields such as architecture, science, and also engineering, effectively “covering the field” of theory and research.  

For universities, the idea of “one school for many arts”, and the explosion of disciplines has seen their growth of sprawling single land use superblocks.  While we acknowledge that single zone district experiments of the 1950’s were failures in efficient or desirable city planning, one of the main ingredients of a dynamic city remains the university.  This despite the early warnings raised by Jane Jacobs in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”.  So now we contend with either a sprawling single zone district (as in Songjiang), apart from all other uses, or (as in Sydney and Melbourne) islands in the heart of the city, relentlessly devouring it. 

But what of the alternative?

Alexander (et al) in “A Pattern Language” called for a ‘University as A Marketplace’, a sprinkling of small facilities throughout the city with open admission.  Distributed campuses within university towns remain largely in favour with New Urbanists.  Why then does this not occur?  This was Oxford (top) and Cambridge in their infancy (minus the admission), so why are they trending away from this?  Why do we see growing consolidation?

One issue is control.  The rising duties of care over students, increasing competition between university ‘brands’ through international ranking systems, the blurring of the line between university and technical college and the growth of cross-disciplines have all left universities seeking to define themselves more clearly, particularly in physical space.

Another is specialisation.  While many universities compete in fields such as law or medicine, Harvard is internationally defined by its MBA program, through which it has dominated business management since its inception.  So too does the LSE define the University of London.  Specialist fields emerge from a mature generalist base, and so fall to large institutions.  Without the university, the specialist college may never predominate.

So, then, what is the future? Here is some grist for the mill:

Franchising of Culture

Art Galleries are commoditising their brand, exporting a fraction of their vast collections to embellish other cities.  The Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Louvre (annex) in Abu Dhabi.  We already see satellite campuses, and have a market in exporting degrees.  Is the future “annex universities”, which offer a sample of their intellectual might?

Bundling and Repackaging

Everyone knows about leveraging off strong brands.  Cross-disciplinary study creates is own niche for bundling and repackaging.  Could universities themselves begin buying and selling individual education commodities?  Rather than the University as Marketplace, could the city bundle the best colleges for itself - the (Harvard) School of Business + the (London) School of Economics, in one place?