Does the Gown Help the Town? Examining Town–Gown Relationship Influence on Local Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Abstract

A US municipality environmental sustainability index, the OSSPI (Opp-Saunders Sustainability Practices Index), found an overwhelming percentage of top-ranked sustainable cities were home to higher education institutions. While this may be a coincidence, this research seeks to determine if and how local communities partner or collaborate with higher education institutions for environmental sustainability purposes. The results of two case studies, San Antonio, Texas and Dubuque, Iowa, suggest there is considerable variability in the town-gown relationships. However, it is found that larger, public universities are more likely to have stronger relationships and effects on local sustainability efforts.

Keywords:

• local sustainability
• town–gown relations
• university–community engagement
• environmental town–gown
• sustainable cities

Notes

¹ While the term universities may be used at points throughout the article to refer to all higher education institutions, this analysis does account for differences between universities, colleges, community colleges, and other institutions classified as post-secondary or tertiary education.

² The COPC program invites only accredited urban public or private nonprofit institutions of higher education granting 2- or 4-year degrees. Therefore, this analysis will take into consideration the significance of urban institutions.

³ A total of 38 interview participants were recruited from relevant colleges, universities, city departments and political offices, and nonprofit entities identified through document review and snowball sampling. Of the 11 interviews conducted, interview participants included nonprofit activists, political figures, public administrators, and university faculty and staff.

⁴ Time is not explicitly considered as part of the strength or weakness. Instead, time is incorporated into the analysis in two ways. First, this analysis seeks to examine at what stage of a city’s sustainability policies and programs a university may be engaged or invited to collaborate. Second, this analysis examines the duration of the partnership to examine how trust/mistrust develops and how each stakeholder evolves.

⁵ There are some potential problems with relying on this data such as the exclusion of certain colleges and failure to identify colleges that are part of a larger system. This was accounted for by cross-referencing with additional sources as necessary.

⁶ An example of an institution that may have sustainability ties but was not included for in-depth analysis is St. Mary’s University, a Catholic institution with approximately 3900 students. St. Mary’s has received a number of grants and worked with the City of San Antonio to revitalize areas surrounding the campus, a service provision exchange and major institutional transformation (St. Mary’s University Neighborhood Revitalization Project N.A.) In addition, St. Mary’s was identified as participating in Mayor Castro’s SA 2020 (Office of Mayor Julian Castro N.A.). However, no interview participants identified the school as a sustainability partner in any capacity-raising questions as to the significance and true strength of the interactions between city officials and the college.

⁷ Initially, climate change was the original framework for the 2006 City Council goal setting process (Personal Communications, Community Involvement Member, 4/24/2012).

⁸ The Sustainable Dubuque plan (http://www.cityofdubuque.org/DocumentCenter/Home/View/2702) outlines a number of awards and recognition the city has received for a number of sustainability efforts.

⁹ The Task Force had created a 50-page document that provided more prescriptive goals. However, this was never presented to the council (Personal Communications, City Employee 2, 4/26/2012).

¹⁰ Examples of nongovernment sustainability projects include the Petal Project, Project Hope, and Buyer Supplier Network.