HSRC Workshop on Universities as Urban Anchor Institutions

Attending today a workshop in Cape Town hosted by HSRC on the role of universities as anchor institutions in urban development. Main speaker is David Perry, a US-based academic who has extensively studied the way US Universities have become active agents of urban change and redevelopment. Core concept is that Universities, unlike businesses, are not footloose – they don’t go anywhere, no matter what happens to the city. This is what makes them ‘place-based institutions’ that have enormous untapped potential to become major activators of urban redevelopment. Many projects were discussed, from building-specific projects to neighbourhood-wide redevelopment planning. It is clear that this framework is definitely applicable to South African Universities. At Stellenbosch we have been trying to do this via the Rector-Mayor Forum since 2005, but political instability or incompetent political leadership has thwarted major progress. There is now new hope since the last elections because the mayor we now have has a good reputation as stable sensible decision-maker – if this is true, this would mean we now have the opposite of what we had before the elections when Stellenbosch Municipality was led by Conrad Sidego who failed to understand the basics of municipal governance and what integrated spatial planning really means. His leadership style resulted in the fragmentation of the DA’s core leadership and the retrenchment of some of the most capable municipal officials in South African local government. Interesting question for me is how one reconciles the role of the University in urban development as an institution (represented by University management) and the role of academically autonomous engaged academics. What may be in the interests of the University as a  property owner with financial backers may not be appropriate from the perspective of progressive academics interested in social justice (in particular integration), economic redistribution and ecological sustainability. I am doing a presentation reflecting on ten years of the Rector-Mayor Forum – yes, I have been sitting in this forum since 2005! Wow, that is hard to believe – I wonder whether the time spent has been worth it. I will be talking about the Spatial Development Framework we drafted, and the iShack social enterprise. But I guess I must admit, without being involved in this process over the past ten years I doubt we would have evolved our sophisticated approach to transdisciplinary research which is the core of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition which I am now the Co-Director of.