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The Problematic Potential ofUniversities to Advance Critical UrbanPoliticsMark Pendras a & Yonn Dierwechter aa Urban Studies Program, University of Washington , Tacoma , USAPublished online: 16 Jan 2012.

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The Problematic Potential of Universities toAdvance Critical Urban Politics

MARK PENDRAS & YONN DIERWECHTERUrban Studies Program, University of Washington Tacoma, USA

ABSTRACT Recent research has explored the connections between universities and thecities/places in which that are located. Increasingly, emphasis is placed on the economic role ofthe university and on universities as urban stabilizers that can mobilize investment and advancedevelopment goals. This article explores a different charge for the university: as a space for theadvancement of critical urban politics. Drawing from our experiences teaching hybridstudent/citizen courses on urban government and politics at a US university, we reflect on thechallenges and opportunities associated with situating the university as an institutional agent incritical urban politics.

KEY WORDS: Critical urban politics, university as developer, participatory action research

Introduction

Political questions about the appropriate role of the university in society are nothing new.

Debates about who the university serves and how have been central to the formation and

evolution of higher education for centuries. However, focused attention to such questions is

not constant; rather it flares up from time to time in relation to changing social, cultural and

political economic conditions. The last few decades have been one such period, as ongoing

critiques of the university as the proverbial ivory tower, cordoned off from society,

neighboring communities and other manifestations of the ‘real world’, have recently

generated a wide range of efforts to reconsider the public university’s mission by reaching

out to, connecting with and otherwise engaging ‘society’, with sustained attention paid to

the needs of the communities in which universities are embedded.

In our view, these are positive developments. However, we also recognize the need for

careful consideration of how efforts by administrators and faculty to become more

‘engaged’ with local communities and more ‘relevant’ to society in general are conceived

and represented. In particular, we want to call attention to two specific concerns that emerge

from our review of the literature related to these trends. One is that overly narrow

definitions of ‘partnership’ and ‘service’ threaten to preempt more expansive visions of the

university as a public institution; the other is that conceptualizing and representing

engagement efforts as practices of resistance that depart comprehensively from those of the

ISSN 0309-8265 Print/1466-1845 Online/12/020307-15 q 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2011.638706

Correspondence Address: Mark Pendras, Urban Studies Program, University of Washington Tacoma, 1900

Commerce Street, Tacoma, WA 98406, USA. Email: pendras@uw.edu

Journal of Geography in Higher Education,Vol. 36, No. 2, 307–321, May 2012

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already compromised university may undermine the vision of the university as an active

political space. In response to these concerns, we argue here for the ‘problematic potential’

of the classroom as an important political space and the university as an institutional agent

that can foster and advance an environment of critical engagement with pressing urban

concerns.

In pursuit of this argument, this article is divided into three additional sections. The first

section provides a sympathetic critique of two prominent strategies to improve and

strengthen university/society connections: attempts to reconsider the role of the university

as urban developer; and attempts to reach out to and participate in ‘the community’

through participatory action research (PAR) and teaching (service learning, research-

based teaching and community-based research). We recognize that through such strategies

universities have made and continue to make notable progress toward improving

their problematic relationships with the communities in which they are embedded.

However, we also recognize and discuss some important limitations to these strategies

that deserve attention. The second section then explores one effort to confront some of

these limitations based on the authors’ experiences teaching hybrid student/citizen courses

on urban government and politics at their university. The third section follows with

reflections on some of the challenges associated with that effort before offering some

concluding remarks.

Situating the University

Public universities in the USA were established in part to confront the long history of

elitism and exclusion associated with education.1 Especially with the establishment of

land-grant universities toward the end of the 19th century, public universities exemplified

a commitment to what Duderstadt and Womack (2003, p. 1) call “some of society’s most

cherished goals: opportunity through education, progress through research, and cultural

enrichment”. Yet, as noted above, this mission has not protected the university from

charges of disengagement. Representations of universities as, for example, privileged

playgrounds where elite students work with elite and radically self-absorbed faculty on the

concerns of questionable relevance to society are by now well known (Bloom, 1987;

Dewey, 1991; Readings, 1997; Kimball, 2008; Horowitz & Laksin, 2009). The wealth of

examples through history—from highly selective admissions criteria, to paternalistic

approaches to research and teaching, through opportunistic support for urban renewal

programs, for example—suggests that universities have been largely (though by no means

always) guilty as charged. These images of the university have been and continue to be

damaging to the ability of advocates to gather the public support—political, cultural and,

increasingly, financial—needed to sustain a vision of public universities as the champions

of equity, opportunity and societal progress.

Efforts to rethink and resituate public universities2 within contemporary society

invariably reflect broader tensions associated with perceptions of the appropriate political

and economic roles of institutions of higher learning. On the one hand, public universities

are expected, at least in theory, to perform crucial civic and political functions. In

nominally open societies like the USA, these functions often include normalizing efforts to

produce ‘democratic subjects’ through a multi-disciplinary teaching agenda (Dewey,

1991). On the other hand, universities are also seen as crucial players in the supply chains

of relevant economic goods, historically as producers of high-quality labor, and more

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recently of intermediate products like technology innovation (Center for Measuring

University Performance, 2007). Seen this way, universities are envisaged by an ever-larger

number of people as part and parcel of the growth clusters that drive urban and regional

economies (Van Geenhuizen, 1997).

Again in theory, these core roles—political and economic—are not necessarily in

conflict with one another. Moreover, many valuable university initiatives, such as public

service programs designed to ameliorate specific community problems, are not easily

captured by one label or the other. In recent years, however, critiques of the contemporary

university have tended to strengthen more explicitly than in the past the economic

expectations of the university’s core mission (Donogue, 2008), particularly in regard to

urban and regional development processes (Wiewel & Perry, 2005). This is the case even

when the critique is essentially political in nature, whether coming ideologically from the

left or the right.

For example, calls for more serious efforts to expand educational access to historically

under-serviced populations are often motivated by traditionally left-wing concerns with

social justice and equality of opportunity (Lowe, 2008). But these calls resonate more

broadly because they reflect apprehension that an under-educated or ill-equipped

population (of laborers rather than citizens) constitutes a poor basis upon which to ensure

necessary economic development, which is also consistent ideologically with more

conservative concerns (Porter, 1982; Atkinson & Easthope, 2008). From this perspective,

academic content is variously described across the political spectrum as esoteric in nature,

ethereal in delivery, disconnected from wider communities and, on the whole, inadequately

related to the current and future needs of major actors in society. These actors include both

workers (students) and employers (firms and agencies), who look to universities to provide

specific kinds of economic services rather than to fulfill their various political

responsibilities in ostensibly democratic and reflective communities.

While these synoptic themes are important, we do not wish to engage any further here

with the now vast literature on the various critiques of and comments upon the

contemporary university within the USA and elsewhere (for a representative range of

views see Readings, 1997; Castree & Sparke, 2000; Bok, 2006; Kimball, 2008; Horowitz

& Laksin, 2009). Our aim instead is to focus more narrowly on two prominent responses to

these critiques, as developed within the recent urban studies literature. The first such

response we call, following Wiewel and Perry (2005), the university as urban developer;

the second, the university as forum for PAR and teaching. We narrow attention here

specifically to these two literatures because, on one hand, they resonate with our own

institutional environment and pedagogical interests: our home institution (University of

Washington Tacoma, UWT) has become central to redevelopment visions and activities in

Tacoma, WA, and we are continuously exploring ways to link our research and teaching

with acute urban development concerns. On the other hand, we recognize that these

literatures also raise broader questions about university/community relationships and

about the role of the university in democratic society that warrant attention. In particular,

based on our review of these literatures, we advance the claim that being a ‘good partner’

does not always mean being politically agreeable—efficiently advancing the city’s extant

policy aspirations. It also means challenging and shaping those aspirations and actively

widening an often narrow understanding of ‘partnership’ or ‘collaboration’ through the

deliberate production of alternative and often locally novel civic discourses around urban

and community possibilities. At the same time, we argue that the production of such

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discourses requires us to move beyond a familiar politics of ‘individual resistance’ to the

‘already compromised’ city and university, and to view the university as a potentially

positive institutional agent in critical urban politics.

Recognizing that the word ‘critical’ is frequently deployed, we therefore first want to

clarify how we are using the term in this article. When speaking here of ‘critical urban

politics’, we mean questioning and, where appropriate, challenging the traditionally

accepted assumptions, theories and policies that shape urban decision making [what Davies

and Imbroscio (2010) refer to as ‘established orthodoxies’], and identifying openings for

new ways of thinking and acting that improve urban conditions (Reese & Fasenfest, 2004).

That does not imply allegiance to any particular policy program. But it does entail a

commitment to social justice, broadly defined, and to questioning and critiquing the status

quo in urban politics and development. As a large, typically well-resourced, institutional

actor, the university is an active participant in urban politics. Our focus here is on the

classroom as an undervalued political space that has the (problematic) potential to help

situate the university to participate in and advance this type of critical urban politics. As

will be discussed in our brief review of the ‘urban developer’ and ‘PAR’ literatures below,

much good work has already gone into positively rethinking the university’s role in this

regard. However, more such work is needed and our remarks here are intended as a

contribution to that effort.

University as Urban Developer

American universities, particularly those located in structurally traumatized central cities

and older suburbs, increasingly intervene in neighborhood revitalization initiatives and/or

community development issues. More simply, because they now spend so much money in

place, today’s universities are seen as urban developers. A significant US literature has

therefore emerged that documents various aspects of this and related experiences

(e.g. Parsons & Davis, 1971; Porter, 1982; Dewar & Isaac, 1998; Feld, 1998; Rubin, 1998;

Reardon, 1998; HUD, 1999; Lowe, 2008). Researchers in many other countries have also

explored implications of the university as urban developer, including work on the role of

universities in facilitating, inter alia: ‘capacity-building’ for settlement upgrading in

post-apartheid South Africa (Krige, 2001); ‘knowledge-based’ economic growth in the

Netherlands (Van Geenhuizen, 1997); ‘city livability’ in Australia (Atkinson & Easthope,

2008) and ‘regional economic development’ in the UK (Harloe, 2004).

In the empirically narrower North American context, Wiewel and Perry (2005) have

focused especially on the university as real estate developer. Following the broader shift to

economic expectations, universities for them have had a rather ambiguous legacy in

relation to cities and society—from purposively disconnected and aloof (with the

understanding that such a position provides the scientific distance needed for good analysis,

critical or otherwise) to deeply rooted in place as an institutional anchor for future urban

development. In terms of the former, universities have long been criticized not only for

maintaining an intellectual distance from society but also, and much more pointedly, for

bluntly pursuing their own interests with little regard for how their actions affect others,

particularly the communities within which they are embedded (ibid). Classic examples

include early conflicts between the University of Pittsburgh, originally called an ‘800-

pound gorilla’, and adjacent neighborhoods (Deitrick & Soska, 2005), and recurrent

conflicts between Columbia University—the third largest land owner in New York City—

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and surrounding communities over the university’s dynamic real estate portfolio, including

perceived racial insensitivities (Marcuse & Potter, 2005). In response to these kinds of

political dynamics, urban universities in North American cities like Pittsburgh, New York,

Atlanta, Toronto, Boston and New Haven have all sought in recent years to become better

‘partners’ in urban development by financing, regulating and investing in urban spaces of

considerable importance to wider city-building dynamics; thus, universities in a wide range

of cities often forge socioeconomic and physical connections (or disconnections) as they

transform property for university-based uses (cf. Parsons & Davis, 1971).

As one example, Marquette University acquired over 50 acres of nearby land to

facilitate a $30 million ‘makeover’ of businesses and apartment buildings; as part of this

development activity, the university procured a $4 million low-interest loan from the City

of Milwaukee as well as major grants from HUD to address, among other problems, crime

prevention and landlord–tenant relations (Brookings Institution, 1997). Our own campus,

the UWT, has been similarly credited with regenerating an entire district of the

downtown—rehabilitating abandoned warehouses, developing mixed-use buildings to

leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED)-platinum status3 and facilitating a

steady economic stimulus to the local retail sector through student, staff and faculty

spending (Coffey & Dierwechter, 2005). Such activity is far removed from the classical

(if always slightly mythical) image of chalkboards and tweed jackets. Along with guest

lectures, today’s universities sponsor small business and incubator parks and even, on

occasion, help to save factories from shuttering their doors, as in 1984 when the University

of Alabama at Birmingham negotiated successfully with General Motors (HUD, 1999; see

also Brookings Institution, 1997).

At the same time, the simple presence of partnership does not automatically imply

socially positive results. As universities engage with community partners focused on

neighborhood revitalization, for example, the underexamined pretense of a politically

neutral, joined-up planning for positive, win–win change inevitably gives way to a messier

process of political conflict (Weivel & Leiber, 1998). Specifically, often unexamined

expectations of joint planning between urban ‘partners’, as Baum (2009) argues, can too

easily generate ‘fantasies’ about the presumed benefits of a metaphorical and literal

‘cross-fertilization’ of two otherwise attractive bodies which, “as if by immaculate

conception, give birth to . . . a program of action that will miraculously bring a solution”

(Baum, 2009, p. 235).

In broad theoretical terms, we maintain that universities not only have the potential to

move beyond the ‘fantasies’ of immaculate conception reflected in standard calls for

partnership and engagement around urban development. We also maintain, from a

stronger normative standpoint, that they should do so, and that one way to accomplish that

is by deliberately producing new kinds of critical political spaces from within the

classroom. As Perry and Wiewel demonstrate, the university, like all of us, spends money,

must spend money and will continue to spend money. Therefore the question, for us, is not

whether the university should be a developer, but rather what kind of developer should it

be—and more to our point, how can/should it conceive of that developmental role in the

first place? We value the new attention paid in the literature to the university as urban

development partner. However, we worry that the push to distance universities from

historical patterns of aloof and self-servicing actions may be guided by an overly narrow

conception of ‘partnership’ that simply enlists universities as urban development boosters

and allies of the local growth coalition. This brings us back to discussions of critical urban

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politics. How can the university as urban developer be both developer and, at the same

time, critical and reflective of its own status and actions as developer and partner? How

can the university carry out its designated role as, for example, real estate and workforce

developer, but do so through the production of new civic spaces which are explicitly

designed to question traditional development strategies, widen development discourses

and advance social justice?

Once again, we argue that at least part of the answer to these larger questions might be

found in the ‘problematic potential’ of the university classroom as a critical political space.

In this familiar location of reflection, we explicitly want to suggest, more critical

conceptions of ‘partnerships’ and ‘engagement’ might actually begin to flourish; such

conceptions in turn could act to disrupt the vague, taken-for-granted and often untested

‘fantasies’ that Baum (2009) identifies by consciously expanding the ‘accepted’ boundaries

of appropriate urban development and social change.

Participatory Action Research

Our emphasis on the university classroom as a critical political space points to a second

body of literature that has aimed to confront the university’s history of disconnectedness

through new approaches to faculty research and teaching. Recent scholarship has

highlighted the emergence and expansion of a range of PAR methods—most commonly

service learning, research-based teaching and community-based research—that confront

directly questions about “the societal relevance and impacts of academic research and the

social and political responsibilities of academic researchers” (Kindon & Elwood, 2009,

p. 20). The various expressions of PAR seek to supplant passive, purportedly politically

neutral and ‘expert’-oriented approaches to knowledge production with those that take

seriously “the existence of a plurality of knowledges in a variety of institutions and

locations” in order to bring about social change (Kindon et al., 2007).

Generally speaking, PAR advocates have done an excellent job of recognizing and

seizing the political potential of the university classroom through thoughtfully designed

projects that often advance the type of critical engagement encouraged here. The wealth of

recent scholarly attention to the rich history and ongoing refinement of PAR strategies and

techniques precludes the need for another thorough review of that story here (see Cahill,

2007; Cahill et al., 2007; Cameron, 2007; Kindon et al., 2007; Kindon & Elwood, 2009).

Instead, our aim is to offer some reflections on how PAR is commonly represented in

relation to the universities with which many researchers and teachers are affiliated in order

to draw out some lessons about situating the university as a participant in critical urban

politics. We focus our attention specifically on one theme found in the PAR literature—the

emphasis on individual researchers and teachers acting against the university. We find that

while the PAR literature does an excellent job of situating individual researchers and

teachers as critical actors (in urban politics and other spheres of activity), it says little

about what the activism practiced by those individuals means for the university as an

institution.

The emphasis on individual researchers and teachers within PAR scholarship is

reflected in the various efforts to connect the researcher’s personal political concerns and

motivations with ‘the community’ (broadly defined), its struggles and/or some other social

change objective (Cahill et al., 2007). In this regard, PAR can be linked with more general

discussions over the years encouraging academics to transcend their isolation in the ivory

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tower and engage in activism ‘beyond the academy’ (Blomley, 1994; Fuller & Kitchin,

2004). In both cases, pressing concerns outside of the university are targeted for critical

attention and activism in a way that positions individual academic researchers and teachers

as active social change participants.

While undeniably important, this type of political orientation emphasizes connections

between the individual researchers and some political cause ‘out there’ in the world at the

expense of critical reflection on the context and role of the university in society. In

response, Castree (2000, p. 956) has suggested that activism “arguably needs to be as

much within and against the academy as about reaching out from it”. This effort to

recognize the university as a political site represents an important shift of focus onto the

institutional settings in which so many conduct research and teaching.

Castree’s call for activism within the university has been taken up in recent years by

PAR advocates as they emphasize their struggles through institutional review board

processes and other institutional barriers to PAR (Cahill, 2007; Cahill et al., 2007;

Cameron, 2007; Hodkinson, 2009). Once again, this is important work; in that it highlights

the crucial importance of PAR within universities (Chatterdon & Maxey, 2009) and

illustrates how universities commonly discourage, or at least inhibit, PAR research. Yet

even within this university-oriented activism, attention tends to remain rather narrowly

focused on finding ways to free up and create space for individuals to pursue their personal

projects related to particular political causes or struggles or with particular marginalized or

excluded groups. There remains much less discussion of what all this activism means for

and says about the university, how it contributes to realizing a particular vision of the role

universities play, or should play, in contemporary society [however, Mountz et al. (2008)

and Hodkinson (2009) are notable exceptions here]. There is a fairly clear message about

what universities should not be doing, but not about what they should be doing and why

they should be doing it. In this regard, the debate about activism ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ feels

truncated; it fails to connect activism to an understanding or vision of what universities

could or should be and why that vision should be supported. We see a missed opportunity

here to explain and demonstrate how PAR, and other critical research and teaching

strategies, helps to advance and realize, rather than combat and resist, the university’s

charge and purpose in contemporary society.

In many ways, our goal here is to make explicit the argument that currently remains

implicit in the various accounts and defenses of PAR work: this is work that universities

should be doing. If PAR indeed represents, as we believe it does, one way to confront the

university’s problematic history of aloof, disconnected, insensitive and exploitative

knowledge production and relationships with ‘the community’, broadly defined, then more

reflection is needed about how PAR constitutes not activism against the university but

rather as and/or for the university. For, as Messer-Davidow (1991) notes “Universities and

colleges are in a strange way us, and we are them”. University-based researchers and

teachers currently engaged in PAR should recognize that, though it may not feel like it,

they are the university. If they are engaged in PAR, the university is also, in part, engaged

in PAR. How does that reflect on the university? Is it not the role of the university to pursue

social justice, to expand and improve knowledge production, to increase opportunities for

marginalized populations and to raise important questions about progress and

advancement? Then how does PAR help realize such goals? By concentrating attention

on what universities should not do, critical scholars have left to others the task of deciding

what universities should do, the task of defining the appropriate role of the university in

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society. At a time when the university is clearly struggling with its identity and future, it

seems crucial that we consider what the university should be and how our work advances

that vision. In the next section, we make an effort to engage such questions through a

reflection on our experiences with a course on local politics and governance at the UWT. In

particular, this course represents our effort, as individual teachers and researchers, to use

our classroom in a way that situates the university as a participant in critical urban politics.

UWT’s ‘Urban Government and Organizations’

Like many state universities, over the past several decades the University of Washington at

Seattle has established a number of satellite (or ‘branch’) campuses as part of an effort by

the state legislature to widen access to higher education, particularly to non-traditional,

disadvantaged and ‘place-bound/time-bound’ populations. Within the context of the

20-year-old campus now located in the city of Tacoma (UWT), this statewide goal merged

fortuitously with long-standing local concerns around inner-city decline, historic

preservation, urban sustainability and downtown renewal. Indeed 20 different locations

were originally considered for the new campus, but UWT’s ‘inner-city’ location was

‘hailed as an important step for the downtown’s economic renaissance’ (Godshaux, 1990).

After establishing teaching competencies in interdisciplinary arts and sciences, nursing,

education, social work, business management and computer sciences, an urban studies

program was formally launched in 2001. This led to the rapid development of a wide range

of necessary course offerings, including a new class in 2004 focused broadly on urban

politics, organizations and governance. Rather than offering a traditional lecture course,

however, faculty members decided to partner with the City of Tacoma’s Neighborhood

Council program in order to develop what was called at the time a ‘hybrid’ learning

environment. The basic organizational idea was to bring together four different

communities who, the UWT faculty assumed, rarely gather in one place on a regular basis:

urban scholars, university students, activist citizens involved especially in neighborhood

issues, and government officials and policy makers.

As originally designed, the class was held twice a week in the evenings. The first class

included all four communities and focused on general discussion of a specific governance

theme, e.g. various models of local government, municipal finance and budgeting,

regionalism, economic development policy, land-use planning, etc. The second class of

the week typically included only students and faculty formally involved in the course and

focused more sharply on academic analyses of that week’s main theme. Somewhat to the

faculty’s initial surprise, the evening classes consistently attracted a healthy number of

activist citizens from Tacoma’s various neighborhoods as well as the most important

policy makers and politicians in the region, e.g. the mayor, city manager, city and county

councilors, the county executive, non-profit managers and the various heads of key city

departments, authorities and agencies.

From the City of Tacoma’s standpoint, the course apparently offered a chance to

associate positively with a campus community that had been routinely credited with

helping to save the downtown and thus regenerate the overall image of Tacoma (Coffey &

Dierwechter, 2005). It also offered a regular opportunity to connect officials with citizens

in an ‘educational’ rather than putatively ‘political’ setting. This setting included a variety

of teaching formats, from single-person presentations of government issues to, in theory,

more lively panel discussions that tried to avoid and work across the predictable policy and

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bureaucratic ‘silos’ commonly found in large institutions. City officials also often

remarked on helping to bridge the ‘academic’ with ‘the real world’.

But from the standpoint of the Urban Studies faculty—the two authors of this article—

the course offered a more explicitly political opportunity. Superficially, of course, we

valued the opportunity to expose our students directly and routinely to public officials and

other policy makers—especially in terms of how they presented and framed governance

issues, public institutions and themselves. No less importantly, the continuous

participation of activist citizens in the classroom environment could only, in our view,

vastly enrich the learning atmosphere for students by leavening often elite discourses and

rationalities of governance with lay knowledge, stories and concerns—an important

contribution in its own right. Course evaluations throughout the years suggest considerable

success in achieving these two goals.

However, as noted, learning about urban government and governance constituted only

one, relatively superficial, dimension of the course goals. More substantially, the course

was and is intended as a mechanism for direct engagement and participation in the vision

of critical urban politics discussed above. We envisioned the classroom here serving as a

space for a genuine and substantive examination of pressing urban concerns. We aimed to

construct an environment in which critical research on urban politics and development

could be used to inform urban policy debates. And we imagined this class as providing a

space where a variety of interests could come together, at some distance from particular

projects and acute conflicts, to identify and discuss ways to confront problems and

improve conditions in the city.

Upon reflection, it has become clear to us that we intended for this project to be an

exercise in critical pedagogy, whereby the classroom becomes “a place where we come

together to make meaning and knowledge about the world(s) we inhabit” (Heyman, 2000,

p. 301). Giroux (1997, p. 218, quoted in Heyman, 2000, p. 301) articulates the vision of

this type of effort:

Critical pedagogy needs to be informed by a public philosophy dedicated to

returning schools to their primary task: furnishing places of critical education that

serve to create a public sphere of citizens who are able to exercise power over their

own lives and especially over the conditions of knowledge production and

acquisition . . . In other words, the language of critical pedagogy needs to construct

schools as democratic public spheres. In part, this means that educators need to

develop a critical pedagogy in which the knowledge, habits, and skills of critical

rather than simply good citizenship are taught and practiced. This means providing

students with the opportunity to develop the critical capacity to challenge and

transform existing social and political forms, rather than simply adapt to them.

(Giroux, 1997, p. 218, quoted in Heyman, 2000, p. 301)

As we have actively facilitated discussions among various groups in our classroom that

critically explore and challenge traditional development ‘orthodoxies’ at work in the city

(e.g. corporate-centered downtown redevelopment; the commitment of scarce resources to

projects supposedly attractive to the ‘creative class’; the characterization of gentrification

as an acceptable and/or unavoidable byproduct of a vibrant local economy), we recognize

some marked successes in advancing this critical pedagogical project, and we continue to

experiment with structural changes to enhance the overall experience. Yet, in general, we

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have been frustrated by an inability to generate the open discussion and exchange needed

to fully realize the type of critical classroom/university space that we envisioned. We link

our frustrations to three specific challenges, each of which will be discussed in turn below:

delivering truth to the tower, student perceptions of the ‘real’ and getting beyond

oppressive civility.

Delivering Truth to the Tower

Perhaps the greatest challenge in establishing the space for critical exchange and debate

has been breaking through the facade of public relations that surrounds guest

speakers/participants in the class. Despite our various efforts to explain course goals

and prepare invited guests for substantive discussions, it is strikingly clear that many

officials view these events as opportunities for them to inform the rest of us of ‘what they

do’. Speakers tend to come prepared for a unidirectional exchange of information: they tell

the audience (perceived as faculty and students isolated in the ivory tower of academe) the

‘truth’ about how things are done and the prevailing conditions in the ‘real world’.

Breaking through that assumption of unidirectionality, in hopes of achieving real

deliberation, has proven exceptionally difficult. The simple explanation for this is the

entrenched culture of public relations and the desire of beleaguered officials to avoid

criticism and conflict by painting a happy face on urban conditions. The more complicated

explanation is that local officials may not view a two-way exchange as productive,

desirable or even practical—a theme familiar to leading students of rationality, power and

participatory policy deliberations within critical planning studies (see Forester, 1989;

Flyvbjerg, 1998; Healey, 2009). Either way, when invited speakers perform a degree of

contentment with their current knowledge and understanding of urban conditions and

concerns, and treat their participation in the classroom exclusively as an opportunity to

teach rather than to learn, it remains difficult to effectively open up space for dialogue

around alternatives.

Student Perceptions of the ‘Real’

Concerns about unidirectionality and the difficulty of establishing a productive exchange

of ideas are closely linked with a second challenge to the intentions of the course: student

perceptions and expectations. On the one hand, in our experience, students tend to view

practitioners as the ‘experts’ who know about what matters in the ‘real world’. What

practitioners do is ‘real’, while the material read and discussed in the class is abstract and

hypothetical, despite efforts to ground readings and discussions in examples and case

studies from a variety of ‘real life’ but often non-local contexts. Such perceptions of

practitioner knowledge and local expertise—that what practitioners offer are the facts to

our fictions—can, and do, limit the willingness of students to engage critically with guest

speakers. Such student perceptions are not entirely surprising. They are, however, limiting.

We certainly would not claim that the true answers are only to be found in the pages of

academic journals and scholarly monographs; but neither do we accept that those currently

in formal decision-making positions, who often have little time or opportunity to follow

the debates in the literature or the experiments and experiences in other cities, nor to

otherwise attend to concerns beyond their immediate job-specific pressures, are the

exclusive holders of knowledge in relation to urban politics and development. That is, the

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purpose of the course design is to facilitate a type of cross-fertilization between academic

and professional perspectives and to make connections with and draw lessons from critical

research and experiences in other places. Yet, such cross-fertilization is difficult when

perceptions of practitioners as already in possession of the ‘real’ knowledge and expertise

needed to develop, manage and/or improve cities limits students’ willingness to ask

difficult questions.

In a similar vein, critical engagement is also limited by student expectations that guest

speakers offer employment opportunities. Such hopes can hardly be criticized, especially

considering the rather bleak economic landscape that awaits students upon graduation.

However, the effect of such expectations on learning (by all classroom participants) is

significant: while students may be otherwise sympathetic to course themes related to

equity and social justice, for example, they may be discouraged from engaging such

themes and asking tough questions out of fear that doing so may undermine their chances

for employment.

Getting Beyond Oppressive Civility

Oppressive civility is a term we use to capture the tendency among speakers and audience

members (students and citizens) to shy away from the most pressing topics and concerns and

to talk around contentious subjects and questions. Some may view this last challenge with

incredulity, especially those in other cities with more contentious political climates.

However, as discussed above, in the case of the UWT, where the campus has served and

continues to serve as a vehicle for urban revitalization, a climate and expectation of

boosterism has grown around the town–gown relationship. In combination with the

challenges discussed above—unidirectionality, public relations facades, student percep-

tions of knowledge, expertise and employment opportunities—the assumption of shared

goals and visions between ‘otherwise attractive bodies’ (Baum, 2009, p. 235) produces an

excessively sensitive discursive climate.

That sensitive discursive climate is especially difficult for the course instructor to

navigate. While the instructor can set the tone—framing the discussion topics, introducing

speakers, posing preliminary questions—there are limits to how engaged the instructor

himself/herself can be. Again, setting a tone of openness and reflection is certainly

reasonable. But persistent and pointed questioning by the instructor may cause invitees to

feel threatened or set up for attack, to feel they have been invited to the classroom only to

be criticized and blamed for problems of the city. It goes without saying that ‘critical’ is

not synonymous with ‘negative’ and that open dialogue is essential to advancing the city

and improving urban conditions. Nevertheless, when the perception is that all share the

same urban development vision and that the role of the university is to advance that vision,

the expectations of civility and harmony can become oppressive to the formation of new

ideas and alternative possibilities for urban policy.

To confront these various challenges, we have experimented with a number of different

structural changes to the course design and delivery, each of which has enhanced the

learning experience, but not to the extent that we feel the challenges have been acceptably

overcome:

. Preparing students for critical engagement: While the course originally

scheduled open sessions with guest speakers and citizens throughout the entire

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10-week term, we have since then reduced the number of open sessions and now

spend the first 3 weeks working exclusively with enrolled students to develop a

foundation of urban history and theory and to prepare them for critical

engagement with speakers. We also spend a significant amount of time discussing

the importance of critical reflection and clarifying the positive role that critical

dialogue can play in shaping urban conditions. The goal here is to confront

student perceptions of expertise and to train students to ask difficult questions

about sensitive subjects in ways that are well informed and respectful.

. Preparing guest speakers for critical engagement: With each new experience we

have attempted to better prepare guest speakers for the type of exchange we

expect. Initially, speakers were given little information about our expectations

and little guidance about the length or content of their remarks. We have since

included clearer and more prescriptive explanations of the course design and

intentions in our invitation letter, in which we ask them to focus their attention on

a particular theme or question (such as ‘power and decision making in Tacoma’)

and to limit their prepared remarks to less than 15 min. We also send an advance

list of three or four questions, developed by the students, to illustrate the type of

dialog the speakers should anticipate. The intent of these changes is to guide

discussion toward substantive topics, increase the time allotted for audience

questions and to open space for unscripted exchanges.

. Cross-interest scheduling: In an effort to avoid a convergence of interests and

perspectives among invited speakers, we have tried to the extent that we are able

to represent divergent interests related to a particular theme. For example, when

considering questions of economic development, we invite not just economic

development officials but also affordable housing and homeless advocates,

workforce training professionals and/or officials from the Department of

Corrections working on transitioning inmates out of the prison system. Similarly,

when engaging a topic like ‘regional cooperation’, we invite participants

representing different scales of interest and different degrees of power. The goal

is to avoid overlapping interests in a way that misrepresents the range of

perspectives and possibilities related to any particular topic.

As noted, each of these changes has improved the classroom experience, fostering a

genuine exchange of ideas and creating space for critical engagement with important urban

political themes and conditions. We also recognize that these changes have enhanced the

ability of this class to not simply facilitate the exchange of existing information, but also to

produce new knowledge and ‘make meaning’ (Heyman, 2000, p. 301) in new ways about

the experience of urban politics and development in Tacoma. Nevertheless, the degree of

exchange and engagement remains limited and, ultimately, unsatisfactory. For, even with

these changes the same challenges persist, if slightly abated, suggesting that we must

continue to search for, and experiment with, new organizational strategies.

Conclusion: The Problematic Potential of Universities to Advance Critical Urban

Politics

Our experiments with a course on urban politics and government are hardly revolutionary,

incorporating guest speakers from outside the academy in the classroom is a time-tested

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pedagogical strategy. In particular, we do not claim that through this course we have

engaged the broader community in which our university is embedded any more or any

better than the many educators who practice the PAR and teaching strategies discussed

above. On the contrary, our own experiments are motivated in large part by the lessons

learned and gains made by PAR advocates and others looking to make universities better

and more engaged community ‘partners’.

But we have also been motivated by what we consider to be important limitations reflected

in the literatures reviewed here. As discussed above, the two literatures that we consider

most directly invested in combating the long history of poor university/community relations

have incompletely addressed important questions about how universities should partner

with and engage their local communities. In the university-as-developer literature, most

attention focuses on how universities can become more benevolent and supportive of

city- and community-defined goals. Less consideration is given to how being a good partner

also involves playing a critical and potentially contrarian role in urban political and policy

discussions. This is a concern that we have attempted to confront directly and explicitly

through the course described here by selecting material, structuring class time and facilitating

discussions that complicate and challenge traditional urban development policies and

assumptions. Similarly, while the PAR literature presents a forceful challenge to the

long history of disengaged research and teaching in universities, we find that it generally

overemphasizes the actions and interests of individual scholars and educators and

underemphasizes both the connections between PAR practitioners and ‘the university’ and

how PAR efforts advance a positive vision for the role of the university in contemporary

society. We recognize and represent our teaching efforts differently. As we are members

of the university and our classes are embedded in the university curriculum, we see our

pedagogical experiments as advancing rather than resisting ‘the university’. From our

perspective, active, critical engagement with pressing concerns of relevance to contemporary

society is central to the university’s mission and purpose. We make every effort to articulate

and defend that message and to demonstrate how our efforts help realize that vision.

We have here aimed to make new contributions to knowledge about university/

community relations and the role of the university in society, on the one hand, by drawing

out some important lessons from key literatures related to these topics and, on the other

hand, by reflecting on our own attempts to use the classroom to situate the university as a

crucial space in and through which to advance critical urban politics. To say that the

university has the potential to advance critical urban politics, however, does not mean that

successfully doing so is unproblematic. On the contrary, as noted above, a wide range of

obstacles can complicate efforts to engage decision makers in substantive discussions of

urban problems and thus limit the kind of new knowledge that can be produced.

Nevertheless, through ongoing experimentation, we have achieved some important gains

and we expect to expand on those gains as our course continues establishing itself as part

of the city’s political fabric. Therefore, for us, the classroom remains a crucial, yet largely

undervalued, political space that has the potential to situate the university as an important

and active institutional agent in critical urban politics.

Notes

1 While many of the trends identified in this article, such as the professionalization and

commercialization of the university, have been experienced in universities around the world, our

focus is specifically on the public university in the context of the USA.

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2 Private institutions of higher education likely face many of the same concerns, challenges and

responsibilities as public institutions. However, as public universities were established through land

grants and other forms of public financing specifically with the institutional mission to advance equal

opportunity across the public as a whole (Dewey, 1991), we are here focused specifically on public

universities.3 LEED is green building certification system intended to verify the environmental quality and sensitivity

of the materials and other resources used in building construction (USGBC, 2011).

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