Universities as Anchor Institutions

Abstract

M uch has been made recently of the role of place-based institutions in the development of cities and regions (AITF, 2009). In fact, the whole notion of the “city” as a “region ” is becoming rather compatible with the broader 21st century geography of “urban ” (Brookings Institution, 2008). For humans, the whole concept of the “urban ” is taking on a species-(re)defining nature. Almost everyone, especially beginning with the work of geographer David Clark (2002) and moving forward to demographers, such as the United Nations ’ global specialist George Martine (2007), suggests that the human species has been forever altered—with more people now living in “urban ” rather than rural settlements. Everyone in this emerging urban majority may not live in a city’s downtown district, but everyone does live in some form of conurbation or metropolitan city or region. Just as the social and demographic conditions of everyday life for a majority of humans are shifting in the early 21st century, so too are the governmental structures related to these residential groups.