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Citation: 30 Conn. L. Rev. 1205 1997-1998

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Fishing Bodies Out of the River:
Can Universities Help Troubled Neighborhoods?
WILLAM W. GOLDSMITH"
I. INTRODUCTION
The matter of university and community taken together is a broad
one. Scholars inherit a long tradition of thinking about university
affairs and an even longer one of thinking about city affairs.' Each
tradition is rich and complex on its own, and the two intersect at many
places and in many ways. 2 We must choose intersections with care if
we are to isolate those aspects that enable us to understand our
particular concern-how universities might help their troubled
neighborhoods and thereby help themselves. The following five
questions will help to situate the inquiry:
1. What expectations have we about the relations between
university and city?
2. What assistance can a university offer to troubled big-city
neighborhoods or their residents?
3. How much does a troubled situation in the surrounding
neighborhood harm the normal functioning of the university?
4. Can a university provide effective help to its own
neighborhood and neighbors, assuming it wants to be helpful?
5. Is there a positive role for the university?
I have decided to approach this bundle of questions mainly from
the perspective of the neighborhood and its residents. Accordingly, I
will begin and end this Article with thoughts about troubled
* Professor of City and Regional Planning Cornell Universly.

1.See generally LEWIS MUMFORD, THE CI'Y IN HISTORY (1961); THE UNIVERSITY AND
THE CITY: FROM MEDIEVAL ORIGINS TO THE PRESENT (Thomas Bender ed., 1988) [hereinafter
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY].
2. "Although there has been a good deal of writing about the university and society, vezy
little attention has been given to one of the key nodes of interaction: the city." See THE
UNIVERSITY AND ThE CITY, supra note 1, at v.
1206 CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW [Vol. 30:1205
neighborhoods and intervention, and I will confine discussion of the

university mainly to the interior sections of the Article.
City planners, urban economists, and others have long worried
about the problems of poor neighborhoods in big U.S. cities. They
have worried about the joint problems of physical decay of buildings,
economic deprivation of the elderly, blacks, Hispanics, and other
minority residents, and social difficulties for everyone who uses
neighborhoods close to downtown.3 In their concern, advocates for
improvement have debated the relative merits of two very different
kinds of programs: programs to assist people and programs to assist
places.' Although proponents sometimes "confuse poor people with
poor areas," 5 programs usually put emphasis either on "people
prosperity" or "place prosperity," targeting either the poor, especially
minorities, or places, usually run-down neighborhoods of the central
city.6 The separate justifications for people-based programs and policies
and for place-based programs and policies help to frame particular
questions about relations between universities and their neighborhoods.
3. See generally AMERICA'S HOUSING CRISIS: WHAT Is TO BE DONE? (Chester Hartman

ed., 1983); WILLIAM W. GOLDSMITH & EDWARD J. BLAKELY, SEPARATE SOCIETIES: POVERTY
AND INEQUALITY IN U.S. CITIES (1992); PAUL GOODMAN & PERCIVAL GOODMAN,
COMMUNITAS: MEANS OF LIVELIHOOD AND WAYS OF LIFE (1947); DAVID M. GORDON,
PROBLEMS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY: AN URBAN PERSPECTIVE (1971); THOMAS L. PHILPOTr,
THE SLUM AND THE GHETTO: NEIGHBORHOOD DETERIORATION AND MIDDLE-CLASS REFORM,
CHICAGO, 1880-1930 (1978); URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING IN AN AGE OF AUSTERITY
(Pierre Clavel et al. eds., 1980); William Goldsmith, The Ghetto as a Resource for Black
America, 40 J. AM. INST. PLANNERS 17 (1974).
4. See Matthew Edel, 'People' versus 'Places' in Urban Impact Analysis, In THE URBAN
IMPACT OF FEDERAL POLICIES 175 (Norman J.Glickman ed., 1980).
5. ROBERT A. LEVINE, THE POOR YE NEED NOT HAVE WITH YOU: LESSONS FROM THE
WAR ON POVERTY (1970)
6. Doreen Massey points out that the "broad position-that the social and the spatial are
inseparable and that the spatial form of the social has causal effectivity-is now accepted
increasingly widely, especially in geography and sociology . . . ." Doreen Massey, Politics
and Space/Time, 196 NEW LEFT REV. 65, 71 (1992). David Harvey puts it this way:
"[Sipatial and ecological differences are not only constituted by but constitutive of what I shall
call socio-ecological and political-economic processes." DAVID HAiVEY, JUSTICE, NATURE AND
THE GEOGRAPHY OF DIFFERENCE 6 (1996). See also David S. Sawicki & Mitch Moody, Deja.
Vu All Over Again: Porter's Model of Inner-City Redevelopment, in THE INNER CITY: URBAN
POVERTY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NExT CENTURY 76 (Thomas D. Boston &
Catherine L. Ross eds., 1997); M. Whitman, Place Prosperity and People Prosperity: The
Delineation of Optimum Policy Areas, in SPATIAL, REGIONAL, AND POPULATION ECONOMICS:
ESSAYS IN HONOR OF EDGAR M. HOOVER (Mark Perlman et al. eds., 1972); Louis Winnick,
Place Prosperity vs. People Prosperity: Welfare Considerations in the Geographic Distribution
of Economic Activity, in ESSAYS IN URBAN LAND ECONOMICS 273 (1966); Roger Bolton, Place
Prosperity vs. People Prosperity Revisited: An Old Issue with a New Angle, 29 URBAN STUD.
185 (1992).
19981 FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER
II. Fix THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO HELP THE PEOPLE:

PLACE-BASED PROGRAMS
At the most vulgar level, public housing advocates and
neighborhood policy-makers once operated with a crude form of social
physics, a physical, environmental determinism that encouraged them to
believe that problems of place caused problems for people Poverty,
they thought, was caused by bad housing-so to eliminate poverty, they
tore down slums.' In a famous application of this environmental
determinism, city planners and architects in the 1950s approached the
building of the new capital city for Brazil. The designers of the city,
Brasilia, believed that "modem architecture and planning [were] the
means to create new forms of collective association, personal habit, and
daily life." They hoped that their modem designs for the capital city
would move Brazil forward more rapidly to escape its underdeveloped,
pre-modem conditions. They had utopian ideas and unrealizable
dreams; although their plans did create unusual physical arrangements,
the persistent forces of social life and politics hardly slowed to notice
the change. The economic power of the few and the poverty of the
many continued to organize real social life in Brasilia, as in the rest of
Brazil, in spite of the cleverly arranged and handsomely designed roads
and neighborhoods, which followed prototypes offered in many of the
most celebrated city-planning texts.' 0 Contrary to the socialist ideals of
the planners, however, powerful reactionaries used Brasilia's isolation
and peculiar planned structure for their own ends, especially following
the brutal military coup of 1964, just five years after the city's
inauguration."
7. For example, "[t]he radical relief for the evilgrowing out of the tenant-house system
can only be reached by first condemning and tearing down the worst class of these buildings."
The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York CIty, 7 CATH. WORLD 553, 557 (1868). See
also E. BARBARA PHILLIPS, CITY LIGHTS 462 (1996) Creviewing the sad history of (a failed
project], an environmental determinist would have a ready explanation for its failure: bad
physical design").
8. For example, the 1974 HHFA demolition of the Pruitt Igoe housing project was one of
the most dramatic demonstrations of this theory. See PHiLLIPs, supra note 7, at 260-62. See
also JAMES FORD, SLUMS AND HOUSING, WITH SPECIAL REIEREICE TO NEV YORK CITY:
HISTORY, CONDITIONS, POLICY (1936); NATHAN STRAUSS, TWO-THIRDS OF A NATION: A
HOUSING PROGRAM (1952); EDITH ELMER VOOD, SLUMS AND BUGHTED AREAS IN THE
UNITED STATES (1935).
9. JAMES HOUSTON, THE MODERNIST CITY: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF BRASILIA
31 (1989).
10. See id See also DAVID G. EPSTEIN, BRASILIA: PLAN AND REALITY (1973); NORMA
EVENSON, Two BRAZILIAN CAPITALS (1973).
11. For a brief history of the period, see THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BRAZIL (Lawrence S.
CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW [Vol. 30:1205
Although theoretical inadequacy was not the main problem with the
design of Brasilia, the questionable theory of physical or environmental
determinism that motivated its designers has frequently caused severe
difficulties and served selfish interests elsewhere, just as in Brazil. 2 In
the United States, such crudely deterministic social theory and selfish
urban interests working together reached their zenith, or their nadir,
with the destructive Urban Renewal programs of the 1950s and 1960s. 3
These programs leveled massive blocks of central cities, displaced
hundreds of thousands of people, and homogenized land use in large,
hostile, anti-human zones restructured for use by business, luxury
apartments, entertainment facilities, and other detached and insulated
activities. 4
Since the promulgation of federal urban-assistance programs in the
1960s, 5 which the Congress funded as its response to the growth of
poverty in racially segregated central-city neighborhoods, advocates for
city development have been more sensitive when using place-based
programs in urban redevelopment. Because they began their thinking
by assuming that bad conditions in the neighborhood might contribute
essentially to the social and economic problems of the residents, some
decided that they would help poor people most by promoting residential
relocation, racial integration, and the dispersal of the ghetto. 6 Other
Graham & Robert H. Wilson eds., 1990). Political expression was limited nationally, but more
strictly limited in the capital city. See generally MARSHALL BERMAN, ALL THAT IS SOLID
MELTS INTO AIR 6-9 (Penguin Books 1988); 0 Novo BRASIL URBANO (Maria Flora Goncalves
ed., 1995).
12. For background on the urban renewal destruction of San Francisco's western addition, a
famous case of Negro Removal, see generally CHESTER HARTMAN, THE TRANSFORMATION OF
SAN FRANCISCO (1984).
13. For one of the most powerful critiques of urban renewal, see JANE JACOBS, THE DEATH
AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES (1961). See also MARTIN ANDERSON, THE FEDERAL
BULLDOZER: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF URBAN RENEWAL, 1949-1962 (1964).
14. See CHESTER HARTMAN, HOUSING AND SOCIAL POLICY 106-07 (1975).
15. In 1967, total federal outlays from all agencies for urban programs still totalled only
$3.3 billion. By 1979, it had increased to $53.7 billion (between $20 and $26 billion when
corrected for inflation). By the early 1970s, HUD's largest programs were Urban Renewal,
Low Rent Public Housing, Grants for Basic Water and Sewer, and Model Cities, totalling just
under two billion dollars in 1970. See William W. Goldsmith & Michael J. Derian, Is There
an Urban Policy?, 19 J. REGIONAL SCI. 93 (1979); see also Roberto G. Quercia & George C.
Galster, The Challenges Facing Public Housing Authorities in a Brave New World, 8 HOUSINO
POL'Y DEBATE 535, 537-41 (1997) (historical survey).
16. See generally Timothy Bates, Utilization of Minority Employees in Small Business: A
Comparison of Nonminority and Black-Owned Urban Enterprises, REV. BLACK POL. ECON,
Summer 1994, at 113; John F. Kain, The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: Three Decades Later, 3
HOUSING POL'Y DEBATE 371 (1992).
FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER 1209
advocates thought that poor accessibility was the problem-poor people

confined to ghettos had more difficulty finding jobs than did people
elsewhere. Still others, but these acting selfishly, favored relocation
because they sought to reclaim central neighborhoods for more
profitable uses. Oddly, similar place-based assumptions later led people
concerned about cities to the opposite conclusion, that bad
neighborhood conditions (or at least the contiguities enforced by racial
barriers) might themselves contribute to positive development. Some
parts of the Johnson administration's War on Poverty (and its
predecessor, the Ford Foundation's Gray Areas Program) assumed that
the poor community itself, through its very isolation, would provide
support for the efforts of poor people.' In this vein, many spoke and
wrote of the ghetto as though it were an underdeveloped country, a
place that might serve as a base for resistance to established authority
and as a locus for community control.' As Matthev Edel pointed out,
even Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a leading critic of these ghetto-
development views, offered his own "spatial view of the ghetto as 'a
tangle of pathology"' that held back individuals who tried to move
ahead.' William Julius Wilson gives a similar emphasis in his
influential work,2" an emphasis on the high costs to individuals of the
neighborhood's weak social networks, a weakness that deprives
residents of information about jobs.
Although there are evident needs for area development programs
and policies, there are two common pitfalls of such place-based
thinking and policy making. The first is called the ecologicalfallacy,
the fallacy of attributing the character of the neighborhood to the
individuals in the neighborhood.2 For example, even if the families in
a neighborhood are poor on average, individual families may be rich.
Usually, some are. Conversely, in neighborhoods that are rich, there
may be some poor families. Why is this a problem? Well, when
17. Frank W. Young provides a sound theoretical argument about the sociogenic contribution
of lack of "relative centrality" to solidarity movements. See Frank W. Young, A
Macrosociological Interpretation of Entrepreneurship, in ENmEPtENEURSHP AND ECOMO.I4C
DEVELOPMENT (Peter Kilby ed., 1971).
18. See ROBERT L. ALLEN, BLACK AWAKrNG IN CAPITALIST Am.ERICA (1997); see also
Goldsmith, supra note 3, at 17; Bennett Harrison, Ghetto Economic Development: A Survey, 12
J.ECON. LIrERATURE 1, 4 (1974).
19. DANIEL P. MOYNIHAN, MAXIMUM FEASIBLE MISUNDERSTANDING: CoMmuNrrY ACTION IN
THE WAR ON POVERTY 65, 69 (1969).
20. See WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED: TiE INNER CITY, THE
UNDERCLASS, AND PUBLIC POLICY (1987).
21. See generally Edel, supra note 4.
administrators (or programs) assign resources to benefit the poor and

when evaluators measure outcomes of programs intended to benefit the
poor, if they base their assignments or evaluations on street address,
location, or place, on average characteristics of the neighborhood, for
example, they will wrongly miss poor families outside the poor
neighborhood and wrongly include rich families inside. Administrators
and evaluators, and news reporters as well, miss this problem
frequently, so that the benefits to the poor of a neighborhood (or city)
inside the boundary are overestimated, even while needy people outside
the boundary line are denied resources.
The second pitfall we may call benefit capitalization.' When a
program targets the place or the site as the beneficiary, then the
benefits may be conferred not on the residents in need, but instead on
either landowners or future residents. One well known manifestation of
this general problem is gentrification: improve the neighborhood with
public investments, mortgage guarantees and subsidies, better schools
and other programs; then see who benefits. In most poor
neighborhoods, statistics show, most residents are renters.23 We also
know that the most needy in many neighborhoods are most often
renters. In neighborhoods of renters, the value of public programs
likely turns into higher rents. Even if rental increases are restricted for
a time, landlords generally manage to capitalize the benefits into the
value of their land and buildings. Eventually, the poor people move
out, perhaps reaping no benefits at all as the area improves, likely
paying high costs for their moves. Although precise measurement of
these shifts in value is difficult, theory suggests that in area-based
22. See id at 178-82.

23. These are not just central city problems. The Census reports that in the United States
as a whole, more than 2/3 of all householders in 1990 owned their homes, but for African
American and Hispanic households the rates were just over 2/5, lower than in 1980. In New
York State, home-ownership rates for African Americans and Hispanic households, in 1990,
were 25 percent and 17 percent respectively. See Housing Vacancies and Homeownership:
Annual Statistics: 1995 (last revised Apr. 15, 1998) <http'/www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/-
hvs/annual95/ann95ind.html>. HUD reports that
The number of American households with crisis-level rental housing needs grew by
nearly 400,000 from 1991 to 1993 to reach 5.3 million, and held steady through
1995. . . . The affordable housing shortage, once concentrated principally in the
cities, is also affecting the suburbs. The number of suburban households with
critical housing needs jumped by 146,000 from 1991 to 1995-a 9 percent increase.
Rental Housing Assistance-The Crisis Continues (Apr. 1998) (visited May 18, 1998)
<http:/www.huduser.org/publications/hsgpolicy/worstcaseindex.html>. For a broad analysis of the
way neighborhoods may deal with related housing difficulties, see JoHN-EMMEUS DAVIS,
CONTESTED GROUND (1991).
1998] FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER
programs, the benefits always shift toward land owners. All place-
based programs, therefore, have a great potential to be land-owner
benefit programs.2 4
III. AN ALTERNATIVE FOCUS: PEOPLE-BASED PROGRAMS
In spite of their professional focus on place, a focus that ascribes

great importance to the city itself (or more specifically the
neighborhood), even urban planners and others involved in
neighborhood redevelopment often insist that people-based programs
provide the most essential help.' People-based programs offer help not
to troubled neighborhoods, but instead to troubled individuals, families,
households, or special groups wherever they may be--to find jobs, earn
more pay, fight discrimination, attend school, buy homes or rent
apartments, get counseling, and otherwise win benefits thought to be
necessary for a decent American life.26 Administrators judge people
eligible for benefits regardless of where they live. When state and
federal agencies fund education or social services, for example, they
usually support programs for people, not for places. People-based
housing-subsidy programs work through vouchers for low-income
renters;' better yet, people-based programs provide training,
employment, and wage and transfer-payment income; place-based
housing subsidies pay construction costs, rent, mortgages, and
maintenance at particular apartments or buildings or projects.2"
Social scientists other than specialists on the city, in their thinking
about social welfare, in their plans for social policy, and in their great
debates over plan and market, often neglect geography entirely."
24. See DAVIS, supra note 23; Edel, supra note 4, at 186.
25. Edel, who had earlier argued prominently in favor of place-based programs, later feared
that spatial concern might replace rather than supplement "attention to the needs of population
groups such as minorities, the poor, and the unemployed." Edel, supra note 4, at 175. See
also HARVEY, supra note 6; Massey, supra note 6.
26. Examples are Workman's Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, ant-bias lavs, AFDC
Pell grants for higher education, and housing vouchers.
27. HUD's "Section 8" program.
28. Public housing, the major place-based U.S. housing program, is of course means tested,
and it has traditionally been available only to the very poor. See Quercia & Galster, supra
note 15, at 540-41.
29. "[f]n most treatises the problem of location of industry never arises." BERTIL OIILN,
INTERREGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE 1 (1967). Notable exceptions am academic fields
founded to counter this omission: the fields of regional science, economic geography, and
human (or urban) ecology (in sociology). See VALTER ISARD, LOCATOn AND SPAcE
ECONOMY (1956); VALTFR ISARD, METlODS OF REGIONAL. ANALSIS (1960).
Economists, for example, nearly always treat nation states as

dimensionless points on the map, entities without cities, provinces, or
regions, endowed only with spaceless interests and capacities for
production, trade, innovation, income, and wealth-entities without
geography. Economists neglect important spatial dimensions, even
national boundary lines, to avoid introducing unwarranted complications
into their models."' They choose therefore to look at the globe in high
abstraction, not just as a flat earth, but as a dimensionless one.
Trying finally to bring space back into the equation, economists
have recently attended to the issues of planning and urban studies,
giving new theoretical life to cities and neighborhoods as they stress
what they call path dependence, i.e., the influence of real historical
events, the importance of scale efficiencies, and the consequences of
positive feedback. 2 When one thinks about these elements of social
change and economic development, these economists admit, one must
think about cities and space.3
Sociologists have been more attentive to these problems in a
theoretical way, but they have been cautious, wondering out loud
whether space should play a useful, central role in sociological
theories.34 In response to the development of a very practical but
perhaps not very scientific "urban sociology,"35 they have worried that a
focus on the city and the neighborhood in isolation (that is, a "spatial
focus") may allow us to ignore the ways urban problems result from
(or are part and parcel of) the normal operations of capitalism, the
seeking of profits, the exercise of corporate power, and the problems
and organizing efforts of the working class.36
Finally, some geographers, city planners and urban critics (David
30. Paul Krugman recently acknowledged this omission in PAUL KRUGMAN, GEOGRAPHY AND
TRADE (1991). See also Edward L. Glaeser, Why Economists Still Like Cities, CITY J., Spring
1996, at 70, 70-77.
31. Economic models are more complicated, for example, when they allow mobility to
factors of production.
32. On feedback in social science theory and models, see Thomas Vietorisz & Bennett
Harrison, Labor Market Segmentation: Positive Feedback and Divergent Development, 63 AM.
ECON. REv. 366 (1973).
33. The accessibility provided by proximity is the economic glue that binds people together
in cities, mainly because larger local markets allow producers to exploit economics of scale.
Recently cities and regions have become centrally interesting phenomena for "complexity"
theorists. See W. Brian Arthur, Positive Feedbacks in the Economy, Sci. AM., Feb. 1990, at
92, 92-99. See also KRUGMAN, supra note 30; Glaeser, supra note 30.
34. See generally MANUEL CASTELLS, THE URBAN QUETION (1997).
35. Edel, supra note 4, at 186.
36. See id.
19981 FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIER
Harvey, most notably, and Jane Jacobs) argue persuasively that cities
(and therefore their neighborhoods), like regions in countries and
countries in the world, play essential, integral parts in the unfolding
unevenness of economic development and decline, class relations and
class conflict, innovation and technological change.3
Does all this theorizing matter? How much do these discussions
pertain to our questions about universities and their neighbors? It
matters plenty; they are highly pertinent! Any examination of the
relations of a large institution with its neighborhood has to begin with
space, geography, with the location of the institution, with the boundary
line that separates it from its neighbors, and with its distance from
others and other places. Reformers must be wary of the
misunderstanding that grows out of the differences between people-
based and place-based assumptions. As we will see below, careful
thinking about the relations between space and people may lead to
more sensible programs and projects.
I will return to these matters below, but first I will briefly connect
the university and its community, then shift to my five questions
outlined above."
IV. LOCATION OF COLLEGE AND GHETIO:

WHY THEY ARE WHERE THEY ARE
Some of those who wonder about the college and the ghetto
wonder, quite simply, why the two are located so often in the same
place?" 9 Why do wealthy colleges and universities serving people of
no color so often sit inside or next to poor neighborhoods housing
people of color? The answer to this question has much less to do with
the current purposes, structure, or functioning of either college or
ghetto, and much more to do with their histories and their long-term
fixed investments in real estate. The historical reasons for existence
and location of ghetto and college may be intertwined, but they derive
from distinct social forces.
The ghetto, for which existence and location are practically one and
37. See William W. Goldsmith, Marxism and Regional Policy: An Introduction, 20 REV.
RADICAL POL ECON. 13 (1988).
38. See supra p. 1205.
39. I use "college" as shorthand for college, university, and other post-high school
institutions of learning, and I use "ghetto," I hope without giving offense, for neighborhood in
which many minority persons find themselves confined.
the same thing, is constructed largely as a residual. There are positive

social and economic values to the ghetto, of course--people need
housing and various amenities; they want to be nearby to friends,
commerce, and services; they need means of access; and the
neighborhood, whether ghetto or not, provides these things. But the
ghetto is special, because it results from a number of directly negative
social forces as well. These forces prevent certain people from living
elsewhere, mainly because of racial discrimination; they limit residential
choice by (exclusionary) zoning, concentration of subsidized housing for
the poor, and high costs of transportation; and they cause decline in the
quality of neighborhoods. Compared to their need, ghettos suffer from
poor maintenance of building stock, poor quality of municipal services,
low investment and annual appropriations for schools, and limited or
inappropriate police protection. What's more, these negative social
forces put pressure on the neighborhoods. Compared to other
neighborhoods, ghettos suffer disproportionately from locally unwanted
land uses (LULUS), such as trash transfer stations and noxious
industries, from incompatible institutions, such as hospitals, and from
encroachments for commercial and industrial uses.40
Ghettos result from racial discrimination added onto the general
process of land-use succession that accompanies metropolitan growth:
land uses often "filter down," like used clothing. In allocations made
by the market, poorer families end up with the most worn clothing and
the most used houses, and worn-out houses in U.S. cities are very
likely to be nearby one another, in the same neighborhoods.
The college, on the other hand, has quite separate reasons for
existence and for location. In contrast to the case of the ghetto, both
sets of reasons are positive. Ezra Comell, for example, founded
Cornell University so that anyone could study any subject, and, as is
well known, he located his university in splendid isolation, outside a
then thriving if very small agricultural processing center.4
Many other founders, as we shall see, sought the pastoral. In
40. See ROBERT D. BULLARD, DUMPING IN DIXIE: RACE, CLASS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL
QUALITY 4 (1990); see also Bunyan Bryant, Overview to ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: ISSUES,
POLICIES, AND SOLtIONS 27-28 (Bunyan Bryant ed., 1995).
41. Ithaca, New York, had a stable population of about 6,800 in 1860, but grew to 10,100
by 1870. The story goes that when in 1868 Ezra said that he "would found an institution
where any person can find instruction in any study," Andy (Andrew Dixon White, Cornell's
first president) responded, "but that's ridiculous," too many students will come. Thinking of
Ithaca's long winters, Ezra replied, "just wait until you see where I'm going to put it."
Editorial, CORNELL DAILY SUN, Dec. 1, 1969.
America as in England, founders and trustees showed biases against the

city, and they decided to locate their new universities precisely so as to
escape the injurious influence of the city.4" This pastoral tradition has
long had a romantic, idealized appeal for many Americans."3 The word
campus in modem meaning apparently began its usage in reference to
the lawn surrounding Nassau Hall at Princeton in the 18th century.44
Today, when such a large majority of college-bound youth grow up in
their own pastoral, suburban scene because their parents have tried,
however vainly, to escape from the complexities of urban life, the
"campus" tradition competes strongly with the Continental "urban"
tradition.
Throughout the United States, many other colleges were founded in
cities, which then grew up and changed around them. Minnesota
geography professor John S. Adams explains how even though founders
established these schools in middle-class neighborhoods, many urban
universities end up in poor neighborhoods, as a function of housing
submarkets. Blue-collar neighborhoods are stable "because they [lack]
purchasing power, access to credit, and a penchant for socioeconomic
mobility that would translate into geographic mobility."4' Elite
neighborhoods stayed put, writes Adams,
because their residents bought what they wanted once and for
all . ..The dynamic, upwardly mobile [neighborhoods] housing
the ambitious middle and upper middle classes were the fastest
growing and expanding outward. These were typically the
areas wherein the [universities] were established, and these were
the same areas abandoned as households moved up and moved
42. Berube stated that:

As late as 1878, a popular collegiate guide deplored the notion of placing the
university in the city: "If Yale were located at Williamstown, Harvard at Hanover.
Columbia at Ithaca, the moral character of their students would be elevated in as
great a degree as the natural scenery of their localities would be increased in
beauty."
MAURICE R. BERUBE, THE URBAN UNIVERSITY IN AMERICA 46 (1978) (quoting FREDERIC
RUDOLPH, THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 93 (1962)).
43. See LEO MARX, THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN 3-11 (1964); MORTON WHITE & LUCIA
WHITE, THE INTELLECTUAL VERSUS THE CITY: FROM THOMAS JErFERSON TO FRANK LLOYD
WRIGHT 1-35 (1962) (citing the works of Crevecocur, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, and others).
On the literary pedigree of the pastoral as myopic history, see generally RAYNIO.NID WILLIA.tS,
THE COUNTRY AND THE CITY (1973).
44. See Thomas Bender, Introduction to THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY, supra note 1,at 3.
45. H-Urban e-mail reply from John S.Adams to Doug Henwood (Mar. 23, 1994) (on file
with author).
out, leaving behind vacancies and soft housing markets that

subsequent newcomers . . . occupied.46
What we find, of course, is very different kinds of universities in
the United States, in very different kinds of locations. Schools like
Princeton, Cornell, and U.C. Davis are situated in exurbs, isolated small
towns, or minor cities; schools like Berkeley, Stanford, and
Northwestern are suburban and protected; schools like NYU, UCLA
and Pittsburgh are urban, but they reside in well-to-do parts of cities;
schools like Yale, Columbia, USC, Penn, and Chicago sit in or next to
troubled, impoverished neighborhoods. These differences suggest that
any generalized discussion of relationships between universities and
their neighborhoods will be partial, confusing, and contradictory. 47 If
we look carefully at most particular U.S. metropolises, the array of
colleges and universities is enormously complex, located diversely in
urban centers in privileged and troubled neighborhoods, in the inner
and outer suburbs, in the exurbs, and in formerly separate small towns.
Unlike so many other large institutions, such as hospitals or office
blocks, colleges find it impossible or very difficult to move. Colleges
have enormous fixed, sunk investments in the physical infrastructure of
their campuses and buildings. In most cases, replacement costs are
prohibitive. Individual residents or families of the ghetto may move, of
course, and they often do. In fact, Americans move their residences
very often, 48 and when they move, they sometimes choose a new
neighborhood. They are especially free to do so if they are not people
of color and if they have enough money. But the neighborhood itself
doesn't move; it changes. Similarly, individuals studying or working at
a college or university may move elsewhere to another school 49or
another job. But the college, the institution, nearly always stays put.
46. Id. See also JOHN S. ADAMS, HOUSING AMERICA IN THE 1980s (1987).
47. For earlier treatments, see generally JULIAN MARTIN LAUB, THE COLLEGE AND
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: A SOCIOECONOMIc ANALYSIS FOR URBAN AND REGIONAL GROWTH
(1972); Martin Meyerson, The University Community and the Urban Community, in THE CITY
AND THE UNIVERSITY 3 (The Frank Gerstein Lectures, York University Invitation Series, 1968);
GEORGE NASH, THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY: EIGHT CASES OF INVOLVEMENT (1973).
48. "The average American moves 11 times in a lifetime, or once every six years." GALE
BOOK OF AVERAGES 25 (Kathleen Droste ed., 1994).
49. HUD Secretary Cisneros looked for examples and found only Pepperdine University,
which left distressed south central Los Angeles for Malibu in 1972, and Marquette University's
former medical school, which moved to a Milwaukee suburb in the 1960s. See HENRY
CISNEROS, HUD, THE UNIVERSITY AND THE URBAN CHALLENGE 21 n.3 (1996).
FISHING BODIFS OUT OF THE RIVER
V. THE LIFE OF THE TOWER AND THE LIFE

OF THE COMMUNITY: INTERSECTIONS
Others who ask questions about the college and the ghetto are
interested mainly in the direct utility of scholarship to community life.
The land-grant colleges were founded, after all, to promote mechanics
and agriculture,5" and they are widely regarded as having been key
instruments in the development of America's preeminent rural economy.
Departments of rural sociology and agricultural economics prospered in
direct relation to their affairs with the extension service. But to a large
extent, rural America is no more. Thus today, many in the community
and many more in the university regard with optimism the possibilities
of reconstituting the land-grant mission to extend service to
neighborhoods, to small business and industry, and to municipal
agencies.5
Still others think of the relationship of city and university in terms
of research.52 From the university side--especially from social
scientists and departments of education, there is great interest in trying
to understand the city, its neighborhoods, and the causes of the
problems that plague residents. From the community side, there are
requests for research on long unattended problems, such as poisoning
from lead paint, or danger from toxic deposits, in addition to the more
requests for assistance with business or social and political
usual 53
affairs.
50. The first public university-the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--was
chartered in 1789 by the state legislature. See Michael I. Luger & Harvey A. Goldstein, What
Is the Role of Public Universities in Regional Economic Detvlopment?, In DILEMMAS OF
URBAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: ISSUES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 104 (Richard D. Bingham
& Robert Mier eds., 1997) [hereinafter DILamAS].
51. I suspect that most faculties with rural orientation-Comell, Iowa State, Tulane,
Davis-encounter great practical and ideological difficulty in shifting their orientation from the
farm and small town to the single-family home or apartment and the big city neighborhood.
One wonders how much of this reluctance derives from a white professoriat's inability to deal
closely and comfortably with clients of color.
52. For example, note the body of work done on Chicago ghettos by William Julius Wilson
and his students in the 1980s. See generally WILSON, supra note 20.
53. See, e.g., AMERICAN ASS'N OF STATE COLLEGES & UNIV. C(AASCU'), EXPLORING
COMMON GROUND: A REPORT ON BUSINESSIACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS (1987) (listing 36
university-business collaborations); BERUBE, supra note 42; J. WADE GILLEY, THE INTERAcnvE
UNIVErrY: A SOURCE OF AMERICAN REVITAUIZATION (1990) (reporting on the strategy of
universities that form an active and reciprocal partnership with the business, civic, and political
leadership of the community); NEW PARTNERSHIPS: HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE NONPROFIT
SECTOR, NEW DIRECTIONS FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING, No. 18 (Elinor Miller Greenberg ed,
1982) [hereinafter NEW PARTNERSHIPS].
Most who think of the college and the ghetto see conflict of
interest, competition for space and use, and mechanisms for protection
and isolation. Is the gated, fortified, and therefore isolated urban
college a precursor, a striking example of what Edward Blakely calls
Fortress America," where privileged people guard themselves against
any but the most controlled contact with the lower classes, where
whites guard against contact with people of color? Or is the urban
college a territory for experimentation, reform, rehabilitation of cities,
and assistance to needy people? In the recent moves by colleges to
serve, strengthen, and develop their neighborhoods, do the college and
ghetto reinforce one another's mutual interests? Or will they break
down from the pressure of social and economic constraints beyond
either's control?
A. Expectations about University-City Relations: An Investment in

Synergy
A university and a city can offer many things to one another.

Indeed, in some places and some periods, philosophers have thought of
universities and cities as indissolubly connected. 5 Some writers have
made the university into the centerpiece of the city. Lewis Mumford
tied together the city, the university, and the great achievements of
civilization, and his ideal city had the university at its physical, moral,
and intellectual center.56 As Thomas Bender reminds us: "The revival
of cities and the revival of learning under the aegis of the university in
medieval Europe were coincident, and since then the city and the
university have shared more of a common history than we usually
recognize."57
'
In the nineteenth century in Basel, Switzerland, the university

enjoyed an intimate relationship with the city. The chancellor of the
university was also mayor of the city (one of two mayors), and
university professors had civic responsibilities. The University of Basel
obliged its professors to deliver major lectures to the public; the
professors took this burden seriously, and many citizens attended.
Professors also taught at Basel's public, college-preparatory school. At
54. See generally EDWARD J. BLAKELEY & MARY GAIL SNYDER, FORTRESS AMERICA:
GATED COMMUNITIES IN TiE UNITED STATES (1997).
55. See LEWIS MUMFORD, THE CULTURE OF CITIES 34-35 (1938).
56. See id. at 478.
57. See Bender, supra note 44, at 3.
19981 FISHING BODIFS OUT OF THE RIVER 1219
Basel in 1870, Frederich Nietzsche had the following obligations in the

summer semester: he taught "two three-hour lecture courses and a
seminar at. the university and a six-hour course in Greek tragedy and
six hours of Latin and Greek language instruction at the
Padagogium-a total of twenty hours." ' 8 As historian Carl Schorske
has written, "[i]n short, the Basel homo academicus, though a free,
protected, and socially appreciated intellectual explorer, was at the same
time a kind of home missionary whose vocation was to develop
cosmopolitan Bildung [intellectual cultivation] in allegiance to the local
, 59
scene.
Many European and Latin American universities still exist today as
an arrangement of threads woven into the urban fabric.' With very
few exceptions, one cannot imagine most university faculties, as
departments are called, not as part of the city, and in many cases, the
separate faculties (such as the professional schools of law and medicine,
but also the faculties of economics and literature and chemistry) will be
found in separate buildings, in widely separated neighborhoods of the
central parts of the city, where the lives of students and professors and
staff are warp for the neighborhood's weave. Only an unaware citizen,
however, would expect high school instruction for the children by
Neitzsche's counterpart.
Today, few Americans (if any) expect such tight and mutual
responsibilities to connect universities and their cities. However, in
some very small college towns that are thoroughly dominated by
universities, like Amherst, Hanover, or State College, PA, we may be
fooled, in the absence of any independent civic life, by the false
appearance of civic and university equality and cooperation. Also, in
some provincial cases, universities and communities are bound
together-as Edward Shils found the University of Chicago to be bound
to its city. The city of Chicago served with great distinction as the
university's research laboratory-indeed, the Chicago school of (urban)
sociology of the early part of the 20th century was so successful in
using the city as laboratory that its work still forms the basis for
research in cities around the world. And city boosters in Chicago were
and apparently are generous in providing financial endowments to the
58. Carl E. Schorske, Science as a Vocation In Burckhardt's Basel, In THE U ivmsTY AND
THE CmTY, supra note 1, at 198. 202.
59. Id at 202
60. For example, in Rio de Janeiro, the law and economics faculties are near the center, but
many faculties are at a distant site.
university."'
Scholars at the urban planning schools of USC, UCLA, and
elsewhere in the country's second largest metropolis claim to have
formed the Los Angeles School of Urban Studies, but the group
exhibits ambivalence about whether to study and criticize the area's
political economy of war, finance and entertainment, or to celebrate,
like true boosters, the area's remarkable cultural diversity.62 In this
more likely case of the university as part of a large and complex city
and society, however, we may need to rethink the relationship
altogether.
Commenting on the changing relationship, Bender warns against a
belief in continuity from the medieval relation between city and
university, suggesting that we will do better to think of the university
as related to "the industrial system, including the knowledge and
service industries, rather than the city."6' 3 It would be hard to imagine
61. See STEVEN J. DINER, A CITY AND ITS UNIVERSITIES 61-64 (1980); ARNOLD R HIRSCH,
MAKING THE SECOND GHETTO: RACE AND HOUSING IN CHICAGO, 1940-1960, at 135-70 (1983);
Edward Shils, The University, the City, and the World: Chicago and the University of Chicago,
in THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY, supra note 1, at 210; Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., Redefining
the Relationship: The Urban University and the City in the 21st Century, 3 UNIV. &
COMMUNITY SCH. 17 (1992). Taylor even writes of a "social gospel" that defined the union
between the university and the city: There "existed an army of faculty members, and their
students, prepared to study the city and to transform their findings into a knowledge base upon
which to form public policy." Id. at 20. For Taylor, the university improved
conditions for Chicago's working class, immigrant, and African American populations.
They analyzed and studied the experiences of these groups with the idea of making
the city work for them. The University, then, was not simply involved with the
city, it was tied to the struggle to build a new environment by using the social
sciences to solve the most urgent problems of the day.
Id. But later,
In Chicago, when academic focus shifted from local to national issues, the cognitive
bond between the University and the city, forged during the 1910s and 1920s, was
gradually and severely weakened. As professors lost interest in local policy issues
and debates, the University became further removed from everyday life and culture in
its environs. In time, there no longer existed an army of faculty members, and their
students, prepared to study the city and to transform their findings into a knowledge
base upon which to form public policy. The nature and character of university-city
relations had changed in fundamental ways. The spirit of the University of Chicago
was dead.
Id.
62. For muted criticism of the L.A. School-to which his book contributes-see generally
MIKE DAVIS, CITY OF QUARTZ 223-60 (1990). For a caustic critique, see James Curry &
Martin Kenny, The Paradigmatic City: Postindustrial Illusion and the Los Angeles School, U.C.
Davis (Feb. 1997) (unpublished manuscript).
63. Thomas Bender, Afterword to THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY, supra note I, at 290,
otherwise, after University of California system-wide president Clark

Kerr's multiversity,' after the gigantic growth of Defense Department
contracting at both state and private universities,' and now with
corporate financing and negotiations over multi-million dollar patent
rights involving professors, businesses and the universities." Interested
outside parties who are leaders in government and industry may
sometimes be found in the same cities as the universities, but almost
never will they be found living in the same neighborhoods.
An understanding of the relationship of the urban university with its
immediate neighbors calls first for an understanding of the central goals
and objectives of the university. The principal functions of the
university are, of course, research and teaching, nurturing of
scholarship, encouragement of learning, recording of history, and (less
so, I believe) questioning and challenging of the society and its
trajectory. As society becomes more modem, complex, and
increasingly globalized, these university functions come to have less
and less to do with local, immediately adjacent places or people.67
At the same time, as the world economy becomes more
interconnected and as the symbols that mediate our social relations
become more universal (and commodified), the universities that prepare
students may find it increasingly difficult to avoid this interconnected
reality. Just as, in Marx's phrase, capital knows no home," so all
aspects of existence become spread, globalized, as it were, so that all
64. See CLARK KERR, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 1960-1980
(1991).
65. See DOROTHY NELKIN, THE UNIVERSITY AND MILITARY RESEARCH; MORAL POLITICS AT
MIT (1972); DAVID F. NOBLE, AMERICA By DESIGN: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE RISE
OF CORPORATE CAPIrALISM (1977).
66. See David F. Noble, Privatizing Academe: Corporate Takeover on Campus, NATION, OcL
30, 1989, at 477, 494.
67. These issues are now frequently discussed. See. e.g., P. ROMAN, Co.wtrrY RESEARCH
AND INFORMATION CROSSROADS: A STRATEGY FOR UNIVERSTY-COMMUNITY COLLABORATION
(1997); P. ROMAN, THE RESPONSE OF CANADIAN UNIVERSmES TO COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS
SEEKING RESEARCH ASSISTANCE (1996); David Adamany, Sustaining Universiy Values W le
Reinventing University Commitments to Our Cities, 95 TCHRS. C. REC. 324 (1994); Conference
Proceedings, Shaping our Common Destiny. Torn/Gown Relations (1996); Roger Bcck ct al.,
Economic Impact Studies of Regional Public Colleges and Universities, in GROWH & CHANGE,
Spring 1995, at 245; Barry Checkoway, Unanswered Questions about Public Service In the
Public Research University, 5 J. PLAN. LITERATuRE 219 (1991); David W. Hendrick ct al, The
Effects of Universities on Local Retail, Service, and F.IRE. Emplo)nent: Some Cross-Sectlonal
Evidence, in GROWTH & CHANGE, Summer 1990, at 9; National Assoc. or State Univ. &
Land-Grant Coll., Urban Policy for the 1990s, 5 J. PLAN. LITERATuRE 4 (1990).
68. See KARL MARX, GRUNDRISSE (Martin Nicolaus trans., 1973).
universities, to some extent, find themselves forced to deal with the

Third World (in their cities, in their classrooms), with monied interests
among their foreign alumni, or with foreign-interested corporations. I
think here of the levelling effects of CNN, Disney, Coca Cola, the
Gap, and rock music. I think of the dissolving of national and regional
differences, as more and more employment occurs in companies linked
to or part of giant, multinational corporations. In all these senses, not
only does the world become a neighborhood, but each neighborhood
becomes the world. For most universities, wherever they are located,
there is no escape.
Just as universities, in pursuing their goals and objectives, make
connections with ever broader and more distant parties, and therefore
need to pay attention to developments in distant affairs, so they find
their immediate, on-campus constituencies more organized and insistent,
requiring attention at home. The modem university must deal at least
with its senior and junior faculty, undergraduate and graduate students,
alumni, research staff, financial supporters in public agencies,
foundations and corporations, secretaries and clerks, top administrators
and minor bureaucrats, service personnel in housing, dining, and
maintenance, and, thanks to the courts,69 prospective students.
Large universities are complex, hierarchical organizations. The
university is likely to delegate the management of relationships with
any of these constituencies to some specialized office or agency. There
will be a dean of (undergraduate) students, a dean of the faculty, a vice
president for managing the investment portfolio, a director of housing
and dining, and so forth. There will (probably) be a low-ranked public
relations officer for community affairs.
Given all the variety, observers might reasonably expect that
different people in different places will have very different expectations
about the relations between universities and their communities. Indeed,
we should not expect any two people to have the same definition of
community, or the same vision of the university. Many university
presidents like to think of themselves as heading up a coherent
institution, one they may refer to as the "university community," but
even on the campus this strikes me today as an unlikely construct.
Some presidents, fewer I suspect, speak seriously about responsibility to
the city, though there is evidence that this may be changing." Far
69. See, e.g., Regents of the Univ. of Calif. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
70. See infra p. 1223.
19981 FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIYER 1223
fewer still would go so far as to claim unity with their city, surely not
with their neighborhood. From Nietzsche lecturing in college-city
intimacy to some of the 25,000 burgers of Basel in the middle of the
19th century (the city was unpopular with the surrounding farmers, it
should be noted), we must come a long way to be able to understand a
complex center of research and learning, like the University of
Southern California, which sits in the middle of a poor and despised
neighborhood of Los Angeles, a metropolis of fifteen million
inhabitants.
B. University Intervention in Troubled Neighborhoods:Evaluations and
Responses
Before turning to the specific case of universities sitting in slums, it

will be useful to examine more broadly the kinds of assistance
programs that U.S. urban universities offer across the metropolis more
generally.7 I have asserted above that, at least until very recently, few
university presidents (or their institutions) concerned themselves very
deeply with their cities, but some have. Here are three speaking in
1993: Sheldon Hackney, former president of the University of
Pennsylvania, then director of NEH: "The problem of the city is the
strategic problem of our time." Charles A. McCallum, president of
the University of Alabama, Birmingham:
Remember that many of our universities, public universities, at
least, were built through tax revenues. In more cases than not,
[the] tax structure ... was heavy on the poor and lower-middle
class and light on the well-to-do. . . [T]he less fortunate
people of America have funded our public universities. And
today a large portion of them live in our cities. So I say it is
time that we made universities more sensitive to the needs of
those who have paid for them.'
William R. Greiner, president of SUNY Buffalo: "Universities are
as well equipped and more obligated than virtually any other social
institution to listen, understand and respond to the desperate voices of
71. See AASCU, supra note 53; BERuBE, supra note 42; GiLUEY, supra note 53; NEw
PARTNERSHIPS, supra note 53, at 7.
72. Neal Peirce & Curtis Johnson, Special Ills Beg for Annomr, NEWS & OasERvER
(Raleigh, NC), Sept. 24, 1993, at Al.
73. Id
our people. If we fail to do so, we will fail the society and the
promise that shaped us, and we will go the way of the great monastic
institutions of the Middle Ages." 74 Even ignoring the conspicuous
rhetorical value of these statements, we may suspect they come from
presidents considerably more concerned with the city than presidents of
their universities would have been twenty-five years ago.
As it turns out, some universities have been very active in their
cities in recent years, and together with agencies of the federal
government, they have initiated numerous programs, many with interests
in their immediate neighborhoods. Below appear two listings: (1) a
brief catalogue of town-gown questions, and (2) a very incomplete list
of formal programs-ignoring, for example, law clinics, medical
services, the urban parts of the Extension Service, and social work
programs-that universities operate to provide assistance to their city's
more needy residents.
1. Town-gown relations
Enrollment. Does the university enroll students from neighbor-
hood/city/suburbs/elsewhere? Are the students rich/poor, Asian/African-
American/American Indian/Hispanic/white, citizens/immigrants?
Employment. How important is university employment to the
community? Philadelphia's "three 'largest private employers are the
University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Thomas Jefferson
University. The University of Pennsylvania alone has approximately
20,000 employees and, through its activities, supports another 24,000
spinoff jobs in Pennsylvania."75
Pay. Do staff members reside in the immediate area? Are they
well paid? Given good benefits? Does the university provide good
training programs, affirmative action, and sliding-scale, on-site day
76
care?
Purchasing. Does the university purchase supplies from local
wholesalers and retailers? Does it provide local business assistance?
Business competition. Do university businesses compete unfairly
74. Id.
75. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ECONOMIC IMPACT FOR
THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1990 (1990), cited in CISNEROS, supra note 49, at 9.
76. In the early 1970s, approximately half of all welfare recipients in Tompkins Coun-
ty-where Cornell University is the dominant employer-held full-time jobs. (This information
was detailed in a report by MOVE, an organization in Ithaca.) Some Cornell service workers
lose all benefits when they are laid off each summer. These people live in the university's
"neighborhood," mostly in the surrounding small towns and rural areas.
with local businesses? The Ames, Iowa Daily Tribune sued the Iowa
State Daily, claiming it competed unfairly because it enjoyed taxpayer
subsidies; the court told Iowa State University to disclose its records.'
Public schools. Does the university help local schools and offer
courses for teachers? Does it offer scholarships or preferential
admissions to local children?
Real estate. What is the university's role in the real estate market?
According to the June 13, 1997 Boston Globe, Harvard and its
surrounding communities don't trust one another, and the issue is real
estate development. According to residents of Allston, Mass., Harvard
broke public agreements about expansion around the Business School
by making secret deals, using hidden businesses as buyers for a 52-acre
plot, and expanding in violation
78
of the master plan agreement. Harvard
says it has broken no trust.
Slums. Is the university a slumlord? Mickey Lauria, Director of
the Division of Urban Research at the University of New Orleans,
writes that
often the university is the slumlord-owning speculative
property for future university expansion or other synergistic
land uses. At the same time, other landlords follow the
university lead and do not reinvest or maintain . . . . Thus the
slumlords, including universities, can milk the property for
rental income stream while waiting for the right time for
redevelopment and make a good profit . . . there are many
incentives for older inner city universities to be slumlords.O
Taxes. How much local land does the university own? How many
local buildings does it own off campus? Does it pay local taxes on its
business activities? Does it make payments for services in lieu of
taxes? How much does the university yield to local pressures for
larger payment?
Rentals. Do students and others provide rental income for small,
needy homeowners? Conversely, does the competition from students
push up rents for local working-class families and poor people, driving
them out or driving their costs up?
Behavior. Do student lifestyles cause neighborhood prob-
77. See EDITOR & PUBliSHER, Apr. 5, 1997, at 9.

78. See Joan Vennochi, The Truth Hurts, BOsTON GLOBE, June 13, 1997, at El.
79. E-mail from Mickey Lauria, Director, Division of Urban Research, University of New
Orleans (Mar. 24, 1994) (on file with the author).
lems-partying, driving, drinking, parking, misbehavior?

In several national forums, people raise these kinds of questions
and provide documentation. Some groups have set up networks,
conferences, journals, and grant programs to support university
participation in the revitalizing of neighborhoods. One approach is
Participatory Action Research (PAR), which engages many individual
scholars and some university programs. Kenneth Reardon's University
of Illinois effort is a good example,8" as is the effort by Fran Ansley
and John Gaventa at the University of Tennessee. 8 Some universities
have established undergraduate Service Learning programs. At Cornell
University, for example, several offices provide small financial
inducements for professors and students to take their teaching and
research into the community. 2 HUD offers Community Outreach
Partnership Center grants, 3 with well-funded programs at many
universities-among them Yale, Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, UICC,
Clark, SF State, Berkeley, Cleveland State, Arizona State, Howard,
Hampton, Marquette, Duquesne, Buffalo, UCLA, Kentucky, and Penn. 4
The Center for Community Partnerships of the Penn Program for Public
Service publishes University and Community Schools, a journal that has
circulated five or six issues since 1989. The journal's purpose is "to
80. See Kenneth Reardon, Community Building in East St. Louis, PLANNERS CASEBOOK (Am.
Inst. of Certified Planners, Washington, DC), Fall 1995 [hereinafter Reardon, Community
Building]; Kenneth M. Reardon, Creating a CommunityIUniversity Partnership That Works: The
Case of the East St. Louis Action Research Project, METROPOLITAN U., Spring 1995, at 47;
Kenneth M. Reardon, State and Local Revitalization Efforts in East St. Louis, Illinois, ANNALS,
May 1997, at 235.
81. See Fran Ansley & John Gaventa, Researching for Democracy and Democratizing
Research, CHANGE, Jan. 11, 1997, at 46.
82. The Faculty Fellows in Service (FFIS), a faculty-led program of the Public Service
Center, provides small grants (up to $2,000/term) for community-based projects that link service
and academic study. FFIS is a university-wide network of 100 faculty. It involves around
800 students per year through service-learning courses and projects. There are 25 service-
learning courses and over 65 experiential education courses listed in the Public Service Center
database. The Public Service Center annually engages over 3,000 students in community
service activities, which include individual and group volunteer activities, community work-study
positions, and service-learning internships. The Center works with about 150 non-profit and
government agencies in the county and with over 200 programs. Projects are not restricted to
Tompkins County, as many faculty and student projects take place in other surrounding
counties, New York City, other states and in foreign countries (Dominican Republic, Mexico,
India). In addition, the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARDI) puts students
into the field. Private communication from Leornardo Vargas-Mendez, Cornell University, Apr.
1998.
83. See CISNEROS, supra note 49; Special issue of J. PLAN., EDUC. & RES. (forthcoming
1998).
84. See CISNEROS, supra note 49.
19981 FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER 1227
increase the contributions universities make to the development and

effectiveness of community schools.""5 In 1989, the editors aimed "to
spark a worldwide informal movement which aims to overcome major
community and societal problems by developing mutually beneficial,
innovative partnerships between universities and local schools. " '
Sensing substantial progress, in 1992, the same editors wrote that
colleges and universities throughout the country were engaging "at an
accelerating rate . . . ."" The American Association of State Colleges
and Universities has issued a series of studies and publications about
the relationships between universities and the larger community. s
2. NeighborhoodDevelopment Programs at ParticularUniversities
The listing that appears in this section is partial-it is an
incomplete census of information about university outreach programs
that are explicit in their aim to contribute to the "urban" community,
where the word urban is nearly always a code word, a euphemism, for
either poor neighborhood or minority neighborhood.9 The U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development under Secretary Henry
Cisneros supported many of these outreach programs." Fran Ansley
and John Gaventa, who run one such program at the University of
Tennessee, wrote an optimistic evaluation in Change called
"Researching for Democracy & Democratizing Research."' They
identify elements of many of the programs listed below and call for
85. Ira Harkavy, Statement of Purpose, 3 UNIV. & COMMUNITY Smt. 1, 2 (1992).
86. Id
87. IL See also Lee Benson et at., Higher Education, Regional Collaboration and inner
City Revitalization: Western New York and Buffalo's East Side as a Pioneer Project, 3 UNIV.
& COMMUNITY SCH. 1, 4 (1992).
88. See, e.g., DIRECTORY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS AT STATE COLLEGES AND
UNIvERSITE (AASCU, 1989); FACULTY RESPONSIBILITY IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY (AASCU,
1990); FULFILLING THE URBAN MISSION (AASCU, 1985); HIGIER EDUCATION4 ECO.\OMIC
DEVELOPMENT CONNECTION: EMERGING ROLES FOR PUBLIC COLLEGES (AASCU, 1986);
INTERACnVE UNIVERSITY. A SOURCE OF AMERICAN REVITALIZATION (AASCU, 1990).
89. The programs listed in this section are documented in journals and ephemera (mainly
program reports from the university programs themselves) and in informal communications I
received in a generous outpouring in March 1998 from respondents to an inquiry I posted on
the Planning faculty e-mail network (PLANET). Where it is appropriate I have noted the
correspondent; many noted that their facts are approximate-some I have checked, most not.
Many thanks to Ashwani Vasishth at USC who e-mailed me a giant file of submissions to the
"Community Networks" section of the COMM-ORG list-scrve, for which Randy Stoecker at the
University of Toledo kept a running diary. See also infra note 98.
90. See CISNEROS, supra note 49.
91. See Ansley & Gaventa, supra note 81. at 48-51.
expansion of new "paradigms" for university research, to support "more

reciprocal relationships between researchers and their subjects, and new
collaborations between research institutions and communities."' Most
of the examples seem less imaginative and forward looking to me than
they do to Ansley and Gaventa, more self-interested, and quite modest
in manpower and budget when compared either to the size of overall
research and teaching efforts at the universities or to the size of the
urban problems of poverty and racial discrimination.93 Nevertheless,
compared to even the recent past, these programs give cause for some
optimism. The paragraphs below, which report for the most part on
programs run by City Planning and Urban Studies departments of
colleges and universities, exhibit diverse and innovative behavior,
enthusiasm, a sense of purpose, and some measure of success.
• The East St. Louis Action Research Project, run from the
University of Illinois, is one of the country's most dramatic and well
documented university-urban development programs. Run since 1990
by students and faculty of the Urban Planning School and other
departments, the effort has involved more than 800 students with
residents from seven neighborhoods and eight community-based
organizations on more than 100 planning projects. The project is
funded by the state through the university at $100,000 per year,
supplemented by grants and program's to the city from state and federal
agencies.
It would be difficult to find a more depressed "neighborhood" than
East St. Louis. The supply of local jobs dropped nearly 80 percent,
from 12,423 to 2,699, between 1970 and 1990; taxes and municipal
services collapsed, and the population declined by one-half (to
43,000). 9" HUD called East St. Louis the "most distressed small city
in America,"95' and the St. Louis Post Dispatch called it "America's
Soweto." 96 And yet, in this almost surreal place, things have turned
around. Although horrendous problems remain, in the words of
Kenneth Reardon, the program's founder, East St. Louis "has been
stabilized and is currently enjoying a period of modest economic
92. Id at 46.
93. This point is elaborated in Part Vii.
94. See Reardon, Community Building, supra note 80, at 2.
95. See Jonathan Kozol, Schools in Distress . . . Harsh Effects of Inequality Felt in East St.
Louis, ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH, Oct. 20, 1991, at IB (quoting JONATHAN KOZOL, SAVAGE
INEQUALITIES: CHILDREN IN AMERICA'S SCHOOLS)
96. See id,
growth. The quality of life enjoyed by most of its residents has

improved dramatically and many families are beginning to feel
guardedly optimistic regarding the future.""
- At the other end of the scale, Clemson University has worked
with the City of Clemson (population 11,000) to jointly organize and
operate a bus system that serves the entire town, including various
points in the University on each route. The bus service is free to
users. It has been running for a few years and appears to be
reasonably well used. The university and town also have a joint
committee that meets monthly and serves as a forum for discussion.93
- The University of Kentucky's Community Development Center
has a HUD grant, which, according to a senior city planning professor
there, "makes up a little for all the bad things our university does to
surrounding neighborhoods[,] parking lots and slumlords among them."
- At Canisius College in Buffalo, the adjoining neighborhood is a
long-established middle and working class black neighborhood called
Hamlin Park. Recently the college has sponsored some student housing
developments and, some time ago, a small mixed-use development
nearby. But there has also been a great deal of neighbor friction
around issues of parking and student tenancy in private rental housing.
Maybe here the ghetto is the "student ghetto."''
- What about historically black colleges? Charlie Nilon of the
School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri-Columbia, reports
that the neighborhood of Atlanta University in the 1940s "was black,
and working/middle class. The residents included college professors
and folks living in John Hope Homes, one of the original public
housing projects .... a pleasant neighborhood. During this period the
AU Center was involved in a variety of projects designed to improve
the lives of local residents."' 0 ' By 1974-78, "[tlhe area around the
center had changed. Few professors lived nearby, the center institutions
97. See sources cited supra note 80.

98. See E-mail from Barry Nocks to author. [N.B.: In this and the several references to e-
mail messages that follow, I have taken liberally, close to verbatim, from messages either sent
to me directly or posted earlier on a list-serve. Because I have modified texts slightly for
presentation, I have not used quotation marks; the words, ho'ever are for the most part those
of the individual writers. See supra note 89 for further explanation. The separate e.mail
messages are on file both with the author and the Connecticut Law Review unless otherwise
noted.]
99. E-mail from Dave Johnson to author.
100. E-mail from Bradshaw Hovey to author.
101. H-urban e-mail reply from Charlie Nilon to Doug Henwood (Mar. 23, 1994) (on file
with author).
were buying property, and the neighborhood looked 'slummy.' It

wasn't pleasant and wasn't safe. This trend has continued."' 2
0 Marquette University in Milwaukee"0 3 has had a spate of
activities in recent years, and it has been especially involved in
revitalization of the surrounding neighborhoods. The school has been
characterized as both a good and a bad neighbor." 4
- U.C. Berkeley founded a program originally called the Oakland
Urban Forum, run through the Institute for Urban and Regional
Development and funded with a HUD COPC grant, a Joint Community
Development grant and other financial resources. 5 Together with
other area colleges and universities and agencies of the City of
Oakland, the Forum provides many professional services involving large
numbers of students, offering expert, technical advice. The program is
as well documented as it is extensive, and it appears to play a large
role in the City of Oakland. As IURD Director Judith Innes reports,
"We are obviously not the whole University. There are other units in
professional schools that have clinics, etc. that serve the community, or
internships, but we are the most broad based and have a campus wide
mandate to bring in people to do a variety of things."'0 6
- Rutgers, Susan Fainstein reports,
has been a participant in the revitalization of downtown New
Brunswick (for better or worse). At any rate, the building
which houses the planning school and the school of fine arts, a
new dormitory, and a shopping mall/parking deck were all built
within the central business district as part of an effort to foster
economic development. The redevelopment of New Brunswick
is, however, controversial, as it displaced both a number of
small businesses and low-income occupants, involved little or
no citizen participation, and generally conformed to a very
traditional urban renewal format. It has, however, been
successful on its own terms, having produced a strengthened tax
102. Id
103. See E-mail from Kris Day to author.
104. See id
105. See CAL IN THE COMMUNITY: A GUIDE TO COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS AND CAMPUS
RESOURCES (1997); Joint Community Development Collaborations in Full Swing, 10 FORUM
NEWS 1, f.f. (Dec. 1997); E-mail from Judith Innis to author; Victor Rubin, The Roles of
Universities in Community-Building Initiatives, IURD, University of California, Berkeley (Jan.
1998) (unpublished paper, on file with author).
106. E-mail from Judith Innes to author.
base and a much more pleasant downtown."0 7

In an ongoing program at Rutgers called Project Community, the school
provides technical assistance to community-based organizations
throughout the state, with fair success for the last three years-the
American Planning Association gave an award for Rutgers' work in
Newark last spring."0 8
- Queen's University is located in Kingston, Ontario (population
125,000). The older part of the city is about 200 years old. The
campus is located between the main street (Princess Street) and Lake
Ontario at the edge of one of the "better" neighbourhoods. The poorer
part of town is north of Princess Street, although it has not declined to
the extent of many American cities. The university and city experience
the usual town-gown tensions.
In the mid-1970s, some of the planning faculty here got wind
of a new urban renewal programme called the Neighbourhood
Improvement Programme (NIP). It focused upon residential
rehabilitation, infill and infrastructure improvements rather than
slum clearance and public housing. Several graduate students
did a pilot study for the grant application, and Kingston got
one of the largest NIP areas and budgets by getting in early.
The designated area was the older and poorer area north of
Princess Street. Two of the students did their Master's reports
on the topic and one stayed as the program administrator.
Ironically, the university's enrollment increased during the late
1970s and 1980s and the student ghetto eventually expanded up
to Princess Street and then jumped into some of the area
rehabilitated by the NIP programme. So I guess this is a good
news/bad news story.'0 9
- USC has done some productive things recently, the most notable
of which is the "Neighborhood Scholars" program. Roughly, thirty
freshmen are selected each year from neighborhood high schools, and
they participate in a university-sponsored program for four years of
high school that includes tutorials, summer programs, and even family
counseling. They may use university facilities and libraries. They are
107. E-mail from Susan Fainstein to author.

108. See E-mail from Norm Glickman to author.
109. E-mail from Dave Gordon to author. See also D.M. BAXRm & M.E. Jo0oO.'4,
CmTZEN PARCIPAwON IN URBAN RENEWAL: KINGSTON'S EXPEENCE WnTH m
NEIGHBOURHOOD IMPROVEMENT AND RESIDENTIAL REHABIUTATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAS.
challenged to maintain good grades, and if they do, they are guaranteed
admission to USC with tuition paid. The Business School and the
School of Social Work also offer programs. In the Planning School,
the Community Development and Design Forum and the Center for
Economic Development are actively engaged with various community
groups and organizations in the USC neighborhood. The Planning
School has an annual program targeting local high school kids, known
as "Building Better Communities," which has been successful, with help
from such local sports stars as Jamaal Wilkes (Los Angeles Lakers) and
Shelby Jordan (formerly of the L.A. Raiders)."'
- The UCLA urban planning program has long operated extensive
outreach efforts as an integral part of its masters degree curriculum,
many of the efforts in support of neighborhood groups promoting
housing and better services or resisting environmental damages.
Planning faculty and graduate students have assisted and promoted
citizen efforts at improvement in housing and neighborhood conditions
for women, at improving public housing projects, and at organizing
poor people and universities to protect and improve air quality and
other environmental conditions in their neighborhoods."'
* Drake University in Des Moines is involved in several
neighborhood projects, including subsidizing mortgages for faculty and
staff who will buy property in the area." 2
- In the early 1970s, the University of North Carolina owned and
operated all utilities: gas, water, electricity, and telephones. These and
a university-based bus system were eventually hived off to city and
other units during subsequent growth cycles. Later, the campus
planned
to redistribute offices and facilities to satellite land holdings
(including [the] airport) within the city, and [considered] the
possibility of establishing a university-based science-laboratory
park, all with predictably positive effects on local communities.
Quite a lot here, but very different in scope and effects from city
110. See E-mail from Tridib Banerjee to author. Also see USC and the Community, a 150-
page compendium listing several hundred community outreach programs, put together by USC
Civic and Community Relations in July 1997.
Ill. For reports on this work, see Dolores Hayden, Placemaking, Preservation, and Urban
History, 41 J.ARCHITECTURAL EDUC. 45, 45-51 (1998); Jacqueline Leavitt & Anastasia
Loukaitou-Sideris, A Decent Home and a Suitable Environment: Dilemmas of Public Housing
Residents in L.A., 12 J. ARCHITECTURAL & PLAN. REs. 221, 221-39 (1995).
112. See E-mail from Eric Kelly to author.
1998] FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER 1233
universities located near impoverished neighborhoods .... .

• The University of Pennsylvania is very active in West
Philadelphia, with a strategy that includes: an improvement district for
clean, safe lighting and promotion; neighborhood support of a
supermarket, movie theater, and other uses; street lighting; buying,
rehabilitating and turning housing around to home owners and
university related rentals; "creating a new elementary school as a
charter school; a targeted purchasing program aimed at economic
development in the area, and [another thousand] 4
things . . . (dental
clinics, health care, tutoring, you name it).""
• Clark University in Worcester "had busied itself with itself for
decades. The Main South neighborhood slid into decline with a
slumping real estate market, soaring unemployment, and too much
crime. And Clark students were displacing residents.""' After a
decade of preparation, with funding from the Ford Foundation, Clark
set up a collaborative University Park Partnership with $8 million in
funds, working on "physical renovation, public safety, education in the
neighborhood, economic development, and social/recreational
opportunities."" 6 Clark's president has moved into the neighborhood,
Clark and the school district have opened an elementary school, and
Clark offers tuition to any qualifying student who is a long-term
resident (five years) in the neighborhood."'
How does one evaluate these and many other university
interventions?"' One yardstick might prove useful-Andrd Gorz's plea
for "non-reformist" reforms." 9 The test: does the reform, in this case
the program operated by the university in a surrounding or nearby
neighborhood, empower the residents so they become more likely to
113. E-mail from Ed Bergman to author.

114. E-mail from Gary Hack to author.
115. David Holmstrom, An Aloof University Learns How to Be a Good Neighbor, CHRiSTIAN
Sc. MONITOR, Sept. 11, 1997, at 10.
116. I,.
117. See id
118. Some tentative evaluations are available. See Victor Rubin ct al.,
Evaluating Community
Outreach Partnerships Centers as Complex Systems: In Search of the "COPC Effect",
METROPOLITAN U., Spring 1998, at 11; Margaret Dewar, Can Evaluation for Empowerment Be
Applied to Economic Development in Empowerment Zones? (Univ. of Michigan, unpublished
paper, Dec. 1997) (paper presented at the Ass'n of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Fort
Lauderdale, Nov. 1997); Ann Forsyth et a]., Urban Design and Service Learning in Low-
Income Neighborhoods: Questions for Students, Faculty, and Communities (UMass, Amherst,
unpublished paper, Jan. 1998).
119. See ANDiRt GORZ, SOCIAUSM AND REVoLUIoN (1967).
undertake further reforms? In a similar formulation, we can ask

whether these programs and others like them show promise of
overcoming the fact-value shield for researchers, the myth that helped
make the multiversity possible and that minimized the possibility of a
reasonable relation between the university and the community.'
VI. THE LOCAL CHALLENGE: NEIGHBORHOOD PROBLEMS

FOR THE UNIVERSITY
From the foregoing examples, as well as from well-known

controversies in the neighborhoods of big city universities, 2 ' it is not
difficult to conclude that neighborhood troubles invade many schools.
Even our use of language conveys considerable meaning. Indeed, in an
exchange of opinions regarding public service, commentators have
noted that the phrase urban university used to mean "university-in-the-
city," therefore potentially providing service to the city, as in the case
of the University of Basel in the 18th and 19th centuries or (according
to some) the University of Chicago in its founding days at the
beginning of the 20th century.' Now, urban university tends to mean
"university-in-poor-or-minority-neighborhood" or perhaps sometimes
"university-with-poor-and-minority-students." In this brief section, three
examples show how university officials and professors themselves sense
problems encroaching from university neighborhoods. In these cases,
we can translate to see that urban means drugs, unaffordable housing,
unsafe streets, substandard schools, and unsafe, unstable
neighborhoods. " No one wants such conditions, least of all a
university that cherishes quiet contemplation and civil discussion.
No one familiar with the situation of universities in U.S. cities in
the last quarter of the 20th century can doubt the difficulties that the
University of Chicago, the Atlanta consortium, Yale, Penn, Columbia,
USC, and many other schools encounter because they inhabit very poor
neighborhoods. Immediately below are three reports demonstrating how
universities that fear their neighborhoods work either to develop them
120. Thanks to Pierre Clavel for suggesting this formulation. See THOMAS BENDER, NEW
YORK INTELLECr: A HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN NEW YORK CITY, FROM 1750 TO Thi
BEGINNINGS OF OUR OWN TIME 294-318 (1987).
121. Think of, for example, the University of Chicago and Hyde Park; or Columbia and
Harlem.
122. See Schorske, supra note 58.
123. See discussion supra Part V.B.2.
19981 FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER 1235
for the residents, to replace the residents, or to take the neighborhoods

over with institutional expansion. Usually, universities pursue some
combination of these efforts.
The University of Southern California watched from inside the 1992
Los Angeles riots. It seems that the rioters respected the school, and
the school mounted a major defensive action. USC president Steven
Sample reports that:
USC was not harmed . ... During the riots, the Earthquake
Emergency Plan was used. The borders of the university were
guarded, and a communication center was established. Students
were encouraged to leave the city, and those who were unable
to leave were housed in a gymnasium. After the riots, final
exams were rescheduled. The riots have enhanced USC's
commitment to the community, and led to the development of
new academic programs.' 24
The university organized like a town under siege, yielding its civil
liberties to military-like authorities, then turning enormous energy to
post-disaster publicity and human relations campaigns with alumni,
parents, and prospective students. The university's leading messages
explain that while the faculty and students will work hard(er) to
provide services to neighbors in need, and will win the neighbors' good
will, the university will also guarantee safety of students, even if it
means having armed guards walking the walls."
Two local newspapers report on the situation in Durham, North
Carolina:
[B]oth Duke and N.C. Central universities are worried about the
safety of their students and the encroaching poverty around
their campuses that could hurt recruiting efforts. . . . Duke has
launched a community partnership with 12 surrounding
neighborhoods and seven schools. The university has pledged
to get involved in such issues as crime, school quality and
affordable housing to ensure neighborhood stability."z
Many of Duke's employees live in these neighborhoods . . .
124. Steven B. Sample, USC and the Rebuilding of Los Angeles, CHANGE, July-Aug. 1993,
at 48.
125. See id
126. Susan Kauffman, Universities Look Outwcard on Toirn-Gown Matters, NEWS & OBSERVER
(Raleigh, NC), July 18, 1997, at 6-7.
that are struggling against an onslaught of urban [sic] ills

ranging from drug-dealing to substandard schools. . . Duke
wants . . . what everybody else wants: affordable housing, safe
streets and good schools. . . . Duke ... expects ... a zone of
safe, stable neighborhoods around East Campus, where the
university is putting millions into new and renovated
facilities." 7
According to historian David Hammack,
[Case Western Reserve University] in Cleveland shares its larger
campus area with Cleveland's largest medical and cultural
institutions, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland
Museum of Art, the Western Reserve Historical Society,
University Hospitals, and about 40 other institutions. All these
institutions are served by a special nonprofit organization,
University Circle, Inc., which not only provides police service,
etc., but also serves as a redevelopment agency for all the
institutions. UCI buys up properties, holds and manages them,
clears land, and makes sites available as needed by individual
institutions. It serves, in effect, as a private municipal
government. "'
VII. THE BIG CHALLENGE: URBAN PROBLEMS IN AMERICA

This Part of the Article requires a shift in direction, to
display-even if only in outline form-the enormous scope and
magnitude of the problems confronting those who attempt urban
revitalization, in contrast to what universities, even in their most
optimistic moments, seem prepared to offer, or, more practically,
compared to the universities' strictly limited capacities. The urban
problem in the United States (as nearly everywhere) is a national
problem. For a start, this is a demographic truism. In the United
States and in all other industrialized countries, great majorities of the
population live in cities, greater majorities every year in ever larger
conurbations."" Jean Gottman coined the term megalopolis thirty-four
127. THE HERALD-SUN (Durham, NC), Feb. 25, 1997.

128. Re: Urban Universities as 20th Century Land Grant Universities <http://www.unimelb-
.edu.au/infoserve/urban/hma/hurban/1994ql/0483.html> [hereinafter Re: Urban Universities].
129. Worldwide, about half the population now lives in cities, for the first time in history,
and the trajectory aims in a pronounced way toward more and larger cities. In the United
States, census-defined metropolitan areas are home to 193 million people, 77 percent of the
19981 FISHING BODIFS OUT OF THE RIVER 1237
years ago, to describe the intensely urban Northeastern U.S. One in

six Americans lives in the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and
Washington-Baltimore areas alone. Add in the Southern California,
Chicago, San Francisco and South Florida megalopoli, and we count
more than one of every four Americans.' 30
The actual issues, the real so-called urban difficulties-poverty and
unemployment, drugs and crime, strained and stringent municipal
budgets, poor services, and racial discrimination--manifest themselves
throughout these areas, on both sides of the arbitrary jurisdictional
boundaries that separate "central cities" from "suburbs."' 3' More
important, these urban difficulties are caused, conditioned and
controlled as much or more by what happens in the suburbs than by
what happens in the city. Adequate analysis, therefore, requires
accounting for the connections between city and suburb.
Cities, and metropolitan areas, exist mainly because they promote
extraordinary achievements of economic efficiency, by providing high
levels of accessibility, which allow and encourage communication,
exchange, testing, and innovation. This high accessibility ultimately
offers benefits to every activity in the city, and everyone theoretically
"pays it back" through increased "productivity." These facts are well
established.' 3 2 Authorities who have tried to resist the economic appeal
of (ever larger) cities have mostly failed, whether they have tried to
limit the expansion of factories and offices (as in highly developed
Britain's attempts to control the growth of London), 33 to relocate plants
in outlying regions (as in underdeveloped Mexico's attempts to decant
Mexico city through industrial subsidies), 34 or to hold back the
migration to the metropolis of rural and smaller city populations (as in
Communist China's controls of rations and residency-permits to limit
population. See U.S. CENSUS, COuNTY AND CITY DATABOOK (1995).

130. See id at thl. C (1995); WOLF VON EcKARDT, THE CHALLENGE OF MEGALOPOLIS
(1964).
131. Frug thinks "women, residents of the declining working-class and middle-class suburbs,
the elderly, and African-Americans" are "four (overlapping) groups" who might be converts to
the cause of a metropolitan-wide consciousness of the need to work across these boundaries.
Jerry Frug, The Geography of Community, 48 STAN. L REV. 1047, 1095 (1996).
132. See. e.g., Thomas Vietorisz et al., Air Quality, Urban Form, and Coordinated Urban
Policies, Report to U.S.E.P.A. from Comell Univ., Apr. 1998, chs. I and II (the author
contributed to this report).
133. See Hooshang Amirahmadi & William W. Goldsmith, Notes on Regional Policy,
prepared for the Ministry of Finance, Mexico, Jan. 1981, at 1-8 (on file with the Connecticut
Law Review).
134. See id
Beijing and especially Shanghai). 1 5
A. American Cities: A Snapshot
Cities reflect, for the most part, the problems of their larger
societies. What are the major problems of American society-and
therefore of its cities? Among them are the following: a severe
maldistribution of income, by many measures the worst among the rich
industrial countries; 36 racial discrimination in economics and social life,
in employment, schooling, and housing; massive unemployment and low
wages (still) among African Americans, American Indians, Puerto
Ricans, recent immigrants, and some other minority population
groups;'" widespread alienation, drug use and drug addiction (including
alcohol) among many population groups; and high levels of directed
and random violence.
One hesitates to use statistics for fear of abstracting and overstating
the case. But some numerical reference points can be useful. If we
look at American prison populations, for example, we find that (even
compared to the repressive USSR and South Africa under the apartheid
regime), the United States performs very badly. Incarceration rates in
the United States are far greater than those of Britain, the highest in
Europe. Young black men are incredibly likely to be involved with the
(in)justice system: one of three is either in jail, awaiting trial, or on
probation. These statistics terrify intelligent observers. 38 As we have
seen, some commentators still think of these as urban problems, but
sensitive interpreters and thorough researchers, like Mike Davis and
Joan Didion reporting on the maladies of white suburbs of Los
Angeles, show us how deeply rooted and widely spread these social
and economic problems have become.'
135. See id at 1, 19-20.

136. See ANTHONY ATKINSON ET AL., INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN ADVANCED ECONOMIES:
EVIDENCE FROM THE LUXEMBOURG INCOME STUDY (1995).
137. Unemployment rates for African Americans are persistently about double the rates for
whites. See GOLDSMITH & BLAKELY, supra note 3.
138. The most recent increases in the prison population result from the "drug war," not from
an increase of crimes with victims. But this "war," too, with its frenzy of prison construction
and privatizations, racial bias, and anti-urban rhetoric, provides a sad measure of the country's
alienation, segmentation, and political decay. See Ben Kohl, War on Drugs, Inc., BOOKPRESS,
1995, at 14-15 (vol. 5:3); see also Ben Kohl, Coca/Cocaine Control Policy in Bolivia and the
United States, COLLOQUI 1, 11 (Cornell Univ., Spring 1996); Mike Davis, Hell Factories In the
Field: A Prison Industrial Complex, NATION, Feb. 20, 1995, at 229.
139. See DAVIS, supra note 62; Joan Didion, Trouble in Lakewood, NEW YORKR July 26,
1998] FISHING BODIES OUT OF THE RIVER 1239
Still, and partly because suburban residents have "forted up" against
outsiders, most minority-inhabited, central-city neighborhoods present
worse problems than do most suburbs: their people are much more
likely to be poor and very poor, they live in older and more
dilapidated housing stock, they have less capacity to pay for preparation
for the future (as in good schools) or protection for the present (in
proper policing), and among them a minority of the minority impose
difficulties and dangers on their neighbors. 4 The causes of America's
profound social and spatial unevenness and separations lie deeply rooted
in the country's history, in the structure of the modem economy, and
in the changes now taking place as the world economy becomes ever
more interconnected and more uncontrollably (but not inevitably)
competitive.
In every modem capitalist economy, the labor market itself offers
the largest set of potential and real benefits. The labor market's
shortcomings therefore cause great injury. The vast majority of the
population must satisfy most of its physical needs via the weekly or bi-
weekly paycheck. But the labor market is structured and segmented,
biased against women, immigrants, and people of color.' 4 ' It is also
quite strongly "biased" in favor of those who hold specialized skills
and generally useful capabilities, in math and language (English), for
example.' In the United States, analysts conclude that a growing
number of people find themselves ill prepared for an ever more
competitive labor market.' 43 The last decades have seen a strong and
unequalizing shift of rewards from workers to business and from low-
paid to high-paid employees.' Virtually all income gains of the last
1993, at 46; see also William Finnegan, The Unwanted, NEW YORKER, Dec. 1, 1997, at 60.
140. In Peter Marcuse's brilliant portrayal of the new ghetto as a neighborhood of outcasts,
the proportion who are destructive grows larger. Marcuse quotes Habermas: "underprivileged
groups can in extreme situations react with desperate destruction and sclf-destructlion." Peter
Marcuse, The Enclave, the Citade4 and the Ghetto: What Has Changed In the Post-Fordist
US. Ciy, 33 URB. AFF. REv. 228, 238 (Nov. 1997) (quoting JORGENS HABEUIAS, TOWARD A
RATiONAL SociEry: STUDENT PROTEST, SCIENCE, AND POLMCs 108-09 (1970)). On the other
hand, Lorc Wacquant properly cautions against the irresponsible and historically incorrect
assertion that most people forced to live in (the U.S. black) ghetto are outcasts, pathetic, or
criminal. See LoTc J.D. Wacquant, Three Pernicious Premises n the Study of the American
Ghetto, 21 INT'L J. URB. & REGIONAL RES. 341, 341-53 (1977).
141. LABOR MARKEr SEGMENTATION (Richard C. Edwards et al. eds., 1973).
142. Vietorisz et al., supra note 132, at ch. 3.
143. "Unable to recruit enough workers, Otto Engineering, Inc. near Chicago lowered its
standards. Assemblers of its electronic switches no longer need to score at a sixth-grade level
on a math test." Louis Uchitelle, Employers Hustle to Fll Job Rolls Without Pay Raises, N.Y.
TIMES, Apr. 6, 1998, at Al.
144. See BENNETT HARRISON & BARRY BLUESTONE, THE GREAT U-TURN: CORPORATE
twenty years have accrued to the wealthy or near wealthy, the top one
or five or ten percent. Those in the majority (the middle 60%, by
most estimates) have seen their incomes stagnate and those at the
bottom have lost, both relatively and absolutely. 4 High proportions of
the people at the bottom are il-prepared; large numbers have dark
skins; high proportions live in central city 6 neighborhoods; and high
proportions are single women with children.'
Many inner-city inhabitants suffer from several layers of painful
causation. They are jobless or earn only low/minimal pay, a result of
lack of opportunity. Poor public schools leave students with inadequate
educations and hopelessness. Dominating institutions and individuals
push others to the bottom of an unfairly biased social structure. What
is more, some neighbors, notably young men with few opportunities for
legal work at decent pay, have adopted anti-social strategies for
survival. These bad results feed back at worst to cause further decay
of people and their neighborhoods; at best they lead to stagnation.
B. European and Canadian Cities: A Contrast
A look at European and even Canadian cities reveals great

contrasts. Although there may be good reason to worry about trouble
in the future, for now, in even the worst cases (London and Paris, e.g.,
with their large numbers of identifiable and discriminated-against
immigrants from South Asia, North Africa, and the Caribbean), we find
cities less likely to have severe slums, and much, much less likely to
have them in the center of the city.' 47 So, as Pierre Hamel at the
RESTRUCTURING AND THE POLARIZING OF AMERICA (1988); EDWARD N. WOLFF, TOP HEAVY:
THE INCREASING INEQUALITY OF WEALTH IN AMERICAN AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT
(1996). Two front page articles in the New York Times illustrate how the rising skewness in
the income distribution, which shrinks the middle class, creates privilege at the top as it pushes
ever large numbers of people down. See Randy Kennedy, For Middle Class, New York
Shrinks as Home Prices Soar, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 1, 1998, at A3 ("builders are creating new
housing only for the city's wealthiest residents and, using government subsidies, for a
comparatively small number of its poorest."); Laurence Zuckerman, Airlines Coddle High Fliers
at Expense of Coach Class, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 1, 1998, at Al (TWA "elite fliers" are identified
by special ticket envelopes so they will get the "extra level of customer service they deserve,"
made possible in part by more cramped quarters in coach class; U.S. Airways is removing
coach seats to make way for spacious business-class service).
145. GOLDSMITH & BLAKELY, supra note 3.
146. Id.
147. See, e.g., Lolc J.D. Wacquant, Urban Outcasts: Stigma and Division In the Black
American Ghetto and the French Urban Periphery, 37 INT'L J. URB. & REGIONAL RES. 366
(1993).
University of Quebec suggests, the conflict we examine may be one

peculiar to the United States.' The reasons, I believe, lie mainly in
two causes.
First, European (and Canadian) national social and economic
policies derive from different sets of beliefs, different constellations of
social and political forces, and different histories. For all the rhetoric
surrounding globalization, European integration, and increased
competitiveness, Europeans still approach the inherent conflicts between
plan and market from a much more public, less private perspective than
do their American counterparts.' The French innovations in labor
market legislation, for example, in February 1998, promoting a nine
percent reduction in the work week (from 39 hours to 35) without
reduction in pay, offer an astonishing contrast to U.S. government (or
British) approaches, which celebrate a lowering of private wages and a
drastic reduction in the social wage as mechanisms to expand
employment. The French, and other European governments also facing
historically high unemployment rates, have decided to increase
employment without letting the bottom fall out. The discussions are
particularly interesting-proponents believe that the politics of wage
policies will allow redistribution of income and reassignment of work,
and they wish to use the wage policy as a means rather than an end,
for the achievement of a more just society, which mixes social
decisions (plan) with private ones (market).5 0
Most of the benefits of European social democracy, such as
national health care, income support, unemployment insurance, and
retirement benefits, accrue to citizens (usually to all residents),
wherever they may be.' Once inside the nation state, the citizen, or
the resident, is automatically eligible either because he or she is needy
or because he or she exists. It doesn't matter where he or she happens
to be. Relying on the results of two recent surveys, Pierre Pestieau
points out that Europeans, when asked, willingly accept increased taxes
for "continuous involvement of the state in a broad range of social
protection benefits."'5 2 Evidence confirms that, in spite of "increasing
148. Re: Urban Universities, supra note 128.

149. Pierre Pestieau, Social versus Private Insurance in the European Union, INsTrrE FOR
EUROPEAN STUDIEs GAZETTE 7 (Cornell Univ. ed., 1997).
150. See Craig R. Whitney, French Jobless Find the World Is Harsher. N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 19.
1998, at Al.
151. See MAURICE MULLARD & SIMON LEE, THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL POLICY IN EUROPE
(1997).
152. Pestieau, supra note 149, at 7.
pressure to roll [the welfare state] back, up to now the performance of

social protection in eradicating poverty and insuring individuals against
major risks has been quite successful . . . . [I]n the European Union
more social 1
' 53
protection implies less poverty and less income
inequality."
Second, in urban policy as well as in national policy, European
governments tend to differ from their American counterparts in a
similar way.5 4 Like the United States, (western) European nations are
almost entirely urban. In the main, Europeans fund their cities from
national budgets-for schools, housing, public transportation, medical
care, etc.-and they expand those budgets in proportion to the
expansion of metropolitan populations.'55 In the main, also, levels of
public funding are far higher compared to private funding.'56 In the
language of mainstream economics, this pattern of funding is called
"subsidized."' 57 But, of course, the reality is that the funding is a
consequence of a social (political) agreement that it makes eminent
sense to collectively fund and provide for many of the needs of an
urban population.
This pattern of funding offers three important advantages to the
city. First, it provides for the (potentially) needy wherever they may
be. Second, it greatly reduces the pressures for the creation of
homogeneous neighborhoods, both wealthy ones and poor ones (in the
Netherlands, and in much of Germany, analysts often encounter
difficulty in classifying neighborhoods the way Americans do, by
income level). Finally, and perhaps most important, the broad based,
relatively low-priced if not free provision of at least basic services
(health, housing, transportation) enormously reduces pressures that push
poor and minority people (immigrants, mostly) into an "underclass" of
153. Id.
154. There is evidence that certain external and internal forces may erode the differences In
the future. See William W. Goldsmith, The Metropolis and Globalization: The Dialectics of
Racial Discrimination, Deregulation, and Urban Form, 41 AM. BEHAv. SCIENTIST 299, 307-09
(1997). See also Pestieau, supra note 149.
155. See GRAHAM KELLY, LOCAL AUTHoRTY FINANCIAL PLANNING TECHNIQUES AND
BUDGETARY PROCESSES 13 (1981).
156. The transportation sector is a good example. See generally JOHN PUCHER & CHRISTIAN
LEFEVRE, THE URBAN TRANSPORT CRIsIs IN EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA (1996).
157. Neoclassical economics defines "non-market" or "unearned" payments as subsidies and
regards them generally as "distortions" that are harmful to efficiency. To reach such
conclusions, and to treat such "transfer payments" pejoratively, economists must accept (among
other things) that the distribution of income is unquestioned, acceptable, or fair.
impoverished outcasts. 58
Taken together, these things mean that city slums, as they are
known in the United States, practically don't exist in Europe. It would
be absurd to overstate the case, both because careful examination
reveals plenty of poverty and misery in European cities, focused in
particular neighborhoods, and because the pressures of inequality in
capitalist markets push hard to produce more poverty and misery there,
but it would be unwise also to ignore the very great differences.
Because of these great differences, Europeans at first have a difficult
time understanding the miserable nature of American cities.
There is another set of reasons why the structure and nature of the
European city present themselves so differently from their American
counterparts. Suburbanization as it is known in the United States, as it
has developed in the "American Century" from 1945 to about 1970,1'9
has not (yet) happened in Europe. Europeans have resisted
suburbanization, and they have resisted better than Americans the
powerful and destructive interests of the industrial complex made up of
the oil, auto, steel, cement, construction, and real estate industries.
They have resisted for historical, institutional, social, cultural, and
political reasons that are beyond the scope of this Article. But
Europeans have consequently paid much more attention to the good
health of their cities. Indeed, when one searches for the zones of cities
where the poor do live, and where schools and other services are less
munificent, one looks not in the centers but on the periphery. Indeed,
in the Italian language of today, the word peripheriarefers not only to
the outskirts of the cittd, but also to the poor conditions of housing, the
lack of public services, the unregulated nature of land development, the
generally outcast nature of those unlucky enough to have to live in the
suburbs!
Peter Marcuse, in an important recent piece of urban analysis,
argues that as bad as the ghetto has been for African Americans in
U.S. cities, recent changes in the global economy make it even
worse. 6' Marcuse argues that the "post-Fordist ghetto is new in that it
has become what might be called an outcast ghetto, a ghetto of the
excluded, rather than of the dominated and exploited or of those only
marginally useful." This adds a new dimension, "a specific relationship
158. See Marcuse, supra note 140; Wacquant, supra note 147.
159. See GoLSMTrrH & BLAKLEY, supra note 3, at 15; KENNETH JACKSON, THE CRABGRASS
FRO rnER THE SUBURBANIZATION OF THE UNITEm STATES (1985).
160. See Marcuse, supra note 140.
between the particular population group and the dominant society that
is economically as well as spatially exclusionary." Where ghetto
residents were previously separated (even as non-citizens) and held
inferior by the larger society, they were related economically and
socially to that society. They are now "not part of the mainstream
economy."''
Against these massive, pervasive, and destabilizing forces of
inequality, discrimination, and economic change, what are appropriate
activities for (urban) universities?
VIII. A PosiTVE ROLE FOR THE UNIVERSITY?

City Planning professor Henry Taylor, Jr., believes it is
"paradoxical and ironic that great universities like Johns Hopkins, the
University of Chicago, and Columbia jut out of a landscape of decay,
decline, and hopelessness-places of intellectual fervor and culture
located in urban ghettos."'6 2 Can we find ways of building on this
paradox, in a society in which only a minority of white public figures
even acknowledge the existence of urban issues, especially problems of
the ghetto?' 63 As we have seen, many urban planning advocates stress
the importance of combating racial segregation, and they contend that
"the spatial focus of . . . programs [could] take advantage of social
processes . . . ."'" Can universities intervene in their neighborhoods
(in a place-based but people-sensitive way) without seeing the benefits
161. Id at 232-33 (noting that in practical terms, total ghettoization is almost exclusively a
problem for black, rather than other minority Americans (such as Hispanics)). But many
Hispanics are also black, thus subject to ghetto restriction, a point made by DOUGLAS S.
MASSEY & NANCY A. DENTON, AMERICAN APARTHEID: SEGREGATION AND THE MAKING OF AN
UNDERCLASS (1993), and by GOLDSMITH & BLAKELY, supra note 3.
162. Taylor, supra note 61, at 18-19.
163. See William W. Goldsmith, Taking Back the Inner City: A Review of Recent Proposals,
REV. BLACK POL. ECON., Fall/Winter 1996, at 95. The problem is broader, of course. When
W.E.B. DuBois in 1903 claimed the Negro was "gifted with second-sight in this American
world," with a "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the
eyes of others," he didn't need to add that the experiences of most whites equipped them with
only single-vision, leaving them, I believe, not simply disinterested, or hostile, but often
incapable of understanding the ghetto. W.E.B. DuBois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK 5
(Penguin Books 1989), quoted in Angela Harris, Race Theory in Contemporary Legal Thought,
at 9 & n25 (unpublished manuscript, Boalt Hall, U.C. Berkeley, n.d.) (on file with author).
On the problem of invisibility of the poor, also see William W. Goldsmith, Is There a Point
in the Cycle of Cities at Which Economic Development Is No Longer a Viable Strategy-Or,
When Is the Neighborhood Too Far Gone, in DILEMMAS, supra note 50, at ,
164. Edel, supra note 4, at 178.
of their intervention transfer mainly to land-owners and other real estate

interests, including their own?
Under difficult and dismal conditions, can we reasonably expect
universities to play a major role in revitalizing the troubled
neighborhoods in which many of them sit, or for that matter the
troubled neighborhoods elsewhere in their cities? I think the answer
must be a guarded one at best. Perhaps it is most sensible to be
pessimistic and negative. The question here is not whether there are
ways the society can turn itself around, solve its most serious problems,
and give voice and decent conditions to its poorest and its minority
members. Clearly, the society has the physical and economic capacity
for such improvements, if only its social and political structures would
permit. The question here is whether urban universities can act with
sufficient power, separately or together with their neighbors, to help
their poor areas of the city develop along with "development" for the
current residents. I think the magnitude of the problems will be
overwhelming to nearly all universities. As Cleveland's Mayor Tom
Johnson said early in the 20th century, his city couldn't fish bodies out
of the river fast enough, as long as someone upstream kept throwing
them in. He suggested that while it was a noble thing to help
drowning people out of the river, it might be more useful to "go up
the stream ... to see who is pushing the people in."'"
American cities need massive improvements and changes, if they
are to rachet up on the ladder of neighborhood improvement. It seems
to me an open question whether university officials, professors,
students, and staff will assist local initiatives to build community, create
conditions to attract business investment, fight to reduce subsidies to
the suburbs, dismantle apartheid, and ultimately help to redistribute
income and tax wealth. To do these things, they will have to look
upstream and then resist the external and imposed pressures that
maintain poverty, that reduce municipal revenues and increase costs,
and that restrict residential options for people of color. They will have
to resist and defame those who would blame the victims of these
external pressures,"" and they will need to teach and work against such
notions as the culture of poverty, in which benefits accruing to
outsiders are obscured by false claims of cultural inferiority." They
165. Robert Mier, Exclusion and Inadequacy Indexes: Labor Market Indicators for Social
Planning, at 2 (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, Aug. 1975) (quoting 1 CLEvELAND
POLICY PLANNING REPORT 11 (1975)).
166. See WILLiuA RYAN, BLAMING THE VICTIM (1976).
167. See CHARLES A. VALENTINE, CULTURE AND POVERTY: CRITIQUE AND COUNTER-
1246 CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW [V/ol. 30:1205
will have to work to identify, publicize, and then eliminate unfair

subsidies to the suburbs, and therefore mostly to privileged white
people-subsidies mainly in housing, public services, and transportation,
subsidies mounting to scores of billions of dollars annually ($50-$80 16
billion for housing, easily triple that for automobile transportation). 1
They will have to fight directly against residential segregation. And
they will have to work to establish better wage, income, tax and
transfer policies.
Will they do these things? I don't know. What I do know is that
universities will continue, quite understandably, to be concerned mainly.
with their own problems-tighter budgets, increased internal demands,
and new pressures from government, alumni, and business. They will
deal with their neighborhoods mainly from a defensive position. They
will mix strategies that help neighbors, replace them with "better"
neighbors, and remove them altogether. I see no reason to expect
otherwise, except at the margin.
My best suggestion is that universities should focus on the
possibilities of what Andr6 Gorz calls non-reformist reforms.'69 Gorz
argued, some time ago and in an entirely different context, that while
most social change comes about in a piecemeal fashion, our piecemeal
interventions are likely to be more lasting when they lead to direct and
immediate empowerment of weaker parties in disputes.17 This is
because empowerment makes people more likely to continue to resist,
and to resist again. Thus organizing, or providing technical assistance,
or joining forces in urban contests over land or services or transfer
payments, appears to be more promising when it involves people in the
neighborhoods in ways that not only satisfy them, (even if only
marginally), but also give them means of demanding (and getting)
more. In the abstract, this is a never-ending process of improvement
and redistribution.
PROPOSALS (1968).
168. See PUCHER & LEFERE, supra note 156. Douglass B. Lee, Jr. estimated unrecovered
public subsidies to highway travel in the U.S. to total $331 billion in 1991. See Douglass B.
Lee, Jr., Uses and Meanings of Full Social Cost Estimates, at 10, tbl. 3 (1996) (unpublished
paper) (on file with Volpe Transportation Center, Cambridge, MA).
169. See GORz, supra note 116.
170. See id.

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Citation: 30 Conn. L. Rev. 1205 1997-1998

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* Professor of City and Regional Planning Cornell Universly.

neighborhoods and intervention, and I will confine discussion of the

3. See generally AMERICA'S HOUSING CRISIS: WHAT Is TO BE DONE? (Chester Hartman

II. Fix THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO HELP THE PEOPLE:

advocates thought that poor accessibility was the problem-poor people

administrators (or programs) assign resources to benefit the poor and

22. See id at 178-82.

III. AN ALTERNATIVE FOCUS: PEOPLE-BASED PROGRAMS

In spite of their professional focus on place, a focus that ascribes

Economists, for example, nearly always treat nation states as

IV. LOCATION OF COLLEGE AND GHETIO:

the same thing, is constructed largely as a residual. There are positive

America as in England, founders and trustees showed biases against the

42. Berube stated that:

out, leaving behind vacancies and soft housing markets that

V. THE LIFE OF THE TOWER AND THE LIFE

A. Expectations about University-City Relations: An Investment in

A university and a city can offer many things to one another.

In the nineteenth century in Basel, Switzerland, the university

Basel in 1870, Frederich Nietzsche had the following obligations in the

otherwise, after University of California system-wide president Clark

universities, to some extent, find themselves forced to deal with the

Before turning to the specific case of universities sitting in slums, it

77. See EDITOR & PUBliSHER, Apr. 5, 1997, at 9.

lems-partying, driving, drinking, parking, misbehavior?

increase the contributions universities make to the development and

expansion of new "paradigms" for university research, to support "more

growth. The quality of life enjoyed by most of its residents has

97. See sources cited supra note 80.

were buying property, and the neighborhood looked 'slummy.' It

base and a much more pleasant downtown."0 7

107. E-mail from Susan Fainstein to author.

universities located near impoverished neighborhoods .... .

113. E-mail from Ed Bergman to author.

undertake further reforms? In a similar formulation, we can ask

VI. THE LOCAL CHALLENGE: NEIGHBORHOOD PROBLEMS

From the foregoing examples, as well as from well-known

for the residents, to replace the residents, or to take the neighborhoods

Many of Duke's employees live in these neighborhoods . . .

that are struggling against an onslaught of urban [sic] ills

VII. THE BIG CHALLENGE: URBAN PROBLEMS IN AMERICA

127. THE HERALD-SUN (Durham, NC), Feb. 25, 1997.

years ago, to describe the intensely urban Northeastern U.S. One in

population. See U.S. CENSUS, COuNTY AND CITY DATABOOK (1995).

Beijing and especially Shanghai). 1 5

A. American Cities: A Snapshot

135. See id at 1, 19-20.

B. European and Canadian Cities: A Contrast

A look at European and even Canadian cities reveals great

University of Quebec suggests, the conflict we examine may be one

148. Re: Urban Universities, supra note 128.

pressure to roll [the welfare state] back, up to now the performance of

VIII. A PosiTVE ROLE FOR THE UNIVERSITY?

of their intervention transfer mainly to land-owners and other real estate

will have to work to identify, publicize, and then eliminate unfair

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