CUMU Conference 2019

Urban universities have long worked with other institutions within their communities on a variety of urban issues. Generally, these interactions have been individual projects involving faculty members, their students and a community partner in the nonprofit, government or business sector. These approaches do not usually draw upon different perspectives and disciplines to support a response to the complex persistent and emerging problems of urban regions. Recognizing the limited impact of short-term projects, the Institute for Sustainable Solutions and senior staff in the City of Portland have been working together to develop a more resilient and responsive approach to the complex problems facing the city and its surrounding region. These efforts are based on new ways of working together, new approaches to generating and using data to guide the development of effective policies and practices and new forms of mutual accountability and trust. These partnership activities are part of a broader effort to create more meaningful city-university engagements in cities around the globe. In this session we will discuss the features that are common to these various efforts to create long-term, adaptive partnerships and to sustain this new way of working between city and university actors across time. Participants will be asked to identify an example of a city/university partnership in their own communities and to assess the extent that these partnerships are moving toward a long-term model. With this information, we will then discuss possible next steps in building successful collaborations capable of adapting over time as emerging problems develop.