Strong Cities and the New Leadership Role for Urban Universities

Universities have always served their communities by providing an educated workforce, and contributing to the knowledge base of a community through its consulting work to government and business, and generally by being part of the social fabric of a community. Increasingly however, like the land-grant colleges of an earlier era, universities in urban and metropolitan settings are being looked to for unique leadership as communities make the transition from a postindustrial economy and society to a new uncertain age in the wake of globalization.

Some universities have already started to more actively engage their communities in meaningful ways-- serving on various local boards and commissions, and significantly, creating new research parks and centers involving the business community. Now, however, in the wake of a basic shift in the structure of the world economy, cities across America are looking to their universities to be principal allies and agents of change.

As author and New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman has said, "The world is flat" -- we are suddenly competing with every community around the world for basic manufacturing requirements and provision of high-tech and biotech services. With this flattening taking place everywhere, we must accelerate change taking place within our communities, and reinvent our centers of learning -- our schools at every level -- at a pace and speed unparalleled in the history of the country.

We can do this best by helping our communities renew and reinvent themselves for this new global age where the Internet, knowledge creation and innovation are key and where collaboration and connectivity are the hallmarks of those most successful communities. And importantly, by accelerating change within the university itself.

The agenda to renew our cities is huge. Many cities are already developing plans to provide the wired and wireless infrastructure of this new age; either in partnership with the existing cable or Telco providers or through some alternative strategy they are aggressively looking for ways to provide so-called wireless "hot spots" often found in downtowns, coffee shops and other public gathering places; and planning a comprehensive wired, 24/7 broadband infrastructure plan.

Broadband today -- or as some call it, broadband Internet -- is as important as the waterways, railroads and interstate highways of an earlier era. Other cities are also exploring how to provide universal broadband access. Like New York, which recently held hearings to find a way provide affordable broadband to all its citizens, it believes that having broadband is as necessary as water, electricity and a telephone in an earlier era, and indeed, such broadband Internet service maybe the missing link to reinventing and renewing our cities for the global knowledge economy.

This is now a matter of some urgency. In the last few years, for example, we witnessed the "outsourcing" of several million high-tech jobs. Forrester Research predicted we would lose 3.3 million such jobs over the next 10-15 years. The University of California at Berkeley, however, said we would more likely see the loss of 10 percent of all white-collar jobs over a similar period, not to outsourcing per se but rather, as a "fact of life" in a global economy.

Not surprisingly cities the world over are struggling to reinvent themselves for the new, global, knowledge economy and thereby attract the most sought-after creative and innovative work force. Those most successful at positioning themselves as "cities of the future" will decidedly have 24/7, broadband telecommunications in place; wired and wireless infrastructures connecting every home, school and office -- and through the World Wide Web -- to every organization or institution worldwide.

The question of who has responsibility for a region's infrastructure however -- not just the cities -- is complex. As columnist and author Kenichii Ohmae and others have observed: "There are no national economies anymore; only a global economy and regional economies