A significant focus of my recent research has considered the interactions between higher education and cities. I am increasingly convinced that the role of higher education within cities will be a dominant trend for the next century. Social, political, economic, and demographic changes all suggest that the importance of the city-university relationship. Over the next three posts, I’m going to be sharing excerpts from my recently published Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research chapter that my coauthor, Karri Holley, and I wrote examining the role of higher education in cities. In today’s post, I will share a section on balancing global and local trends with cities and higher education.
Evidence of the growth of the knowledge economy can be seen in a move from economies driven by the production and distribution of goods to those driven by information exchange and the high-level provision of services (Kasarda, 1988).
The 20th century economic mainstays of manufacturing, warehouses, and retail have largely disappeared, replaced by white-collar jobs requiring postsecondary training.
For example, large cities in the industrial Midwest and Northeast United States that historically relied on manufacturing such as steel or automotive struggled as those industries declined when firms moved to countries that provided lower wages and more advantageous economic conditions.
Some of the cities, such as Pittsburgh, retooled their economies and focused on new areas of science, technology, and engineering (Power, Ploger, & Winkler, 2010).
In a study of major American and European cities that successfully transitioned their economies, Power, Ploger, and Winkler (2010) found that universities served a valuable role in fueling scientific and knowledge advances as well as the ability to recruit knowledge workers. These cities were able to transition from their industrial base to an economically more viable bias that improved the social well-being of its citizens.
Extant research recognizes the import of large cities to global functions.
In their discussion of “world cities,” Friedmann and Wolff (1982) note that these locations play a significant role in global finance, decision-making, market expansion, and production.
The definition of a world city is not wholly a question of population size, although the examples that Friedmann and Wolff cite (including San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York) have millions of residents. Rather, a world city is one that is highly integrated, and in most cases essential, to the global network of economic interactions.
World cities are further characterized by employment growth in professional sectors such as management, banking and finance, telecommunications, research, and higher education.
Sassen (2001) offers the complementary definition of a “global city,” or a city that serves as a vital hub for financial and production services necessary to the global economy.
Even for those local regions whose economic infrastructure does not possess the global influences that define world or global cities, the two concepts suggest the possibilities of locally-specific influences in a global world.
Given the global influences noted above, city-regions face harsh competition for investment, which may indicate the potential value of the place-bound organizations such as anchor institutions for supporting city development.
The result of globalization and concurrent transportation innovations is a mobile and flexible stream of capital and human resources.
Using worldwide economic data, Ghemawat (2011) argues that, while globalization exists, the phenomenon has been overstated by contemporary researchers. In his book, Ghemawat describes how connectivity (i.e., communication and transportation) does not equal a merging or global integration— at least not to the degree argued by popular proponents such as Friedman (2007, 2008).
Rather, regional differences still matter in terms of how people experience the world.
Moreover, despite technology, proximity both within and across national borders explains some of the planet’s economic activity, in part because of unique regional characteristics that influence integration.
For cities, this argument posits that building networks and reliance on local resources will drive the economic success even within a more globalized environment.
Simply put, the proximity of universities matters to cities even as higher education and cities engage more globally (Bercovitz & Feldman, 2006).
Within this context, higher education institutions play a key anchoring role—developing industry concurrent with research priorities, fostering partnerships with industry, and producing and retaining graduates that contribute to future developments (Jones, Williams, Lee, Coats, & Cowling, 2006).
The ways that the various actors in a city including higher education, government, and businesses engage with each other influences the direction of cities throughout the industrialized world.
In Europe, the changing emphasis on leadership and government at the local level is called “localization” (Gaffikin & Morrissey, 2011).
Simultaneous with the changing emphasis on local governance and the value of place, globalization results in a paradox, what Swyngedouw (1997) terms glocalization, where individual city-regions form webs of global interactions and networks of economic activity.
Understanding globalization requires understanding the ways in which local activities, knowledge, and resources shape global perceptions and engagement (Quelch & Jocz, 2012).
Despite these changes that occur as a result of globalization, the importance of local context inside large cities has grown more important, not less (Malecki, 2013).
Globalization forces seem isomorphic, but the interaction with local conditions, networks, and resources creates different outcomes (Morley, 2003).
Audretsch (1998) and Jaffe (1989) in studies of university research and innovative activity find that, although material goods and information may be transported easily across global space, the nuances of tacit knowledge as a necessary component of innovation require a more local network to ensure a competitive advantage.
Local environments particularly at the policy level place greater importance on how actors engage with one another within a city as well as other unique local contexts.
