Proxy wars, the parklet, and the university: challenges for urban design

ABSTRACT

Changes in government funding to universities require that they pursue new opportunities. Some respond by moving campus operations from suburbs to inner cities. Some draw on temporary and tactical urbanism to enhance placemaking and accessibility. In the process, they must acquire and hold a social licence, which is not guaranteed. This research involved analysing such outcomes in an in-depth account of one university’s attempt to develop a temporary parklet in a central business district as part of its own suburb-to-city relocation. That work revealed a proxy war about retail trading, vehicles and on-street parking, and universities’ fundamental purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Parklets
• retail trading
• temporary and tactical urbanism
• universities
• vehicles and parking

Introduction

Disparate forces affect urban design, among them structural changes shaping universities as organizations and an increase in temporary and tactical urbanist approaches to streets and footpaths. This paper brings these apparently unrelated forces together in conversation.

Like their suburban counterparts, city-based universities comprise research and teaching facilities, student accommodation, cultural and public spaces, and transit infrastructure. Their central locations may mean that city universities are more accessible and porous – qualities that foster people’s capacity to linger. When that happens, other financial and creative benefits flow (see, respectively, Litman 2003; Soares et al. 2022). One approach that can engender those qualities is a form of temporary and tactical [T/T] urbanism known as the parklet – an area of greenery and seating often reclaimed from street parking.

In that light, the paper’s first aim is to explore and understand what happened when one university that is committed to a suburb-to-city move sought to develop a parklet next to new purpose-built student accommodation. The parklet was to be on roadway managed by a municipal government in the central business district of a regional capital city in Australia. In other work, there was an examination of how members of the public perceived and understood the same parklet proposal (Jarman and Stratford 2023a). The work reported here involved analysing how experts working in or for the university later evaluated the circumstances that led to the withdrawal of the parklet development application from assessment by the municipal planning authority. It also involved documenting how those experts gauged why, in the end, the university was not granted the social licence to proceed, despite the parklet’s inclusive design.

These agendas inform a second, larger aim – a desire to grasp and reflect upon the uneven geographies and power relations of what might be described as a proxy war about urban space and the changing characteristics of universities in urban life. The significance of the research rests on its capacity to build on urban design studies about universities’ capacities to influence cities and communities (Hebbert 2018). Some such influence might be negative. But given universities’ public mission, there is much they could do to collaborate with others and ensure their presence in cities strengthens placemaking, accessibility, and conviviality. The chief argument advanced in the paper is that such potential will remain unmet if diverse publics do not or will not engage with the difficult realities of structural change in higher education and the pressing need to deploy urban design to enrich city life and shift how universities’ fundamental remit can be seen as including the provision of infrastructures of innovation and care.

The paper proceeds with a discussion about the conceptual framework and literature that has informed the research and then outlines the case study’s context and methodology. Thereafter, findings are considered and focus on the (a) parklet’s site-specific challenges; (b) disruption, community (dis)engagement, and the media; and (c) competing priorities, social responsibility, and debates about the purposes of universities. In the process, analysis establishes how some retailers in premises adjacent to the site defended the inviolability of private vehicle use and on-street parking and show how other detractors questioned the university’s right to engage in urban design for transformative ends.

Conceptual framework

As public intellectual organizations, universities are expected to innovate in design, including in relation to campuses and their connectivity. Increasingly, they are fulfilling that expectation by advancing sustainability goals such as urban greening, smart transit, low carbon construction, and justice-informed social amenity. Some innovations are of significant scale and involve entire campuses; others are modest. Not all are permanent, and, in such cases, universities may draw on temporary and tactical designs. On that understanding, below attention is paid to the literatures on universities and on T/T urbanism to provide a conceptual framework for what follows.

University transformation

Universities are significant players in city geographies, and they can be as or more influential than commercial and retail operations in central business districts. Ballantyne et al. (2022, 1) have pointed out that retail operations are ‘inextricably linked to the desirability of cities, as the primary sites of consumption within them’. They do not include large public organizations in their analysis. Yet such organizations¹ arguably provide goods and services that are ‘consumed’, and their personnel are important, active customers in cities.

As place-based anchor organizations, universities catalyse urban change, and profoundly affect diverse constituents (Perry, Wiewel, and Menendez 2009). They benefit from partnerships with host cities – often municipal governments – such that they and others enjoy economic development, infrastructure investment, cultural revitalization, and environmental dividends (Klein 2021). In contexts where investments are limited, university-led renewal may lead to urban regeneration (Fernández-Esquinas and Pinto 2014). In Europe and the United States, such renewal sometimes rests on debates about whether universities should be separate from or integrated into the fabric of large urban environments (Hebbert 2018).

Structural changes affecting universities have forced their governing bodies to marshal financial, including real estate, assets (Benneworth, Charles, and Madanipour 2010; McNeill et al. 2022). Pitfalls exist. Valverde et al. (2020) have warned that universities acquiring new buildings may succumb to the ‘art of the deal’ and then fail to evaluate such strategies’ effectiveness. Some find themselves ‘accidental’ property developers, where others plan both property acquisitions and developments despite reduced government funding and fluctuating enrolments. Either way, to realize universities’ transformative capacities in cities, Addie (2017) has proposed thinking about universities in urban society as distinct from urban universities. For Addie, it is crucial to move beyond narrow development and economic agendas, limited understandings of city functions, and instrumental views of universities and unsettle power relations informing how urban space is produced. For Koekkoek et al. (2021) that work cannot be done without community engagement. However, that argument takes universities into realms in which their functions are radically reshaped – necessary but risky.

Temporary and tactical urbanism

Cities change. Some change requires formal statutory planning; significant economic resources; long timeframes; and effective collaborations (Landgrave-Serrano, Stoker, and Crisman 2021; Shaw and Sivam 2015; Vallance and Edwards 2021). Some change requires cutting through formalities. T/T urbanism can exemplify that approach (see Stevens, Awepuga, and Dovey 2019), although its two parts – the temporary and tactical – are sometimes seen as separate (Bishop and Williams 2012; Jiang, Ware, and Gao 2019). Paradoxically perhaps, effective T/T projects may need long-term coordination, stabilized and binding rules, and trained personnel (Brenner 2015). Either way, T/T urbanism is part of ongoing refinements to placemaking (Martinez 2018; Rossini and Bianchi 2020). As such, it has influenced planning policies and development regulations (Cloke and Dickinson 2019; Moore-Cherry 2017); propositions that reclaiming space from vehicles fosters walkability and sound infill development (Dovey 2020); and civic debates about which temporary uses of city space are legitimate (Bach and McClintock 2020; Berglund 2019; Jarman and Stratford 2023a).

Disruption that leads to the sudden availability of urban space is a catalyst for T/T projects. Such disruption can occur at scales from local road closures (Kingham, Curl, and Banwell 2020) to regional socioeconomic transitions (Carr and Dionisio 2017; Rossini and Bianchi 2020) to major natural disasters (Carlton and Vallance 2017; Cretney 2019). In the face of disruption, T/T projects foster collaborations across public, private, and non-government sectors and communities (Bennett and Moore 2017; Bragaglia and Rossignolo 2021). According to Tardiveau and Mallo (2014), collaboration can lead to various outcomes: some are emancipatory; others produce controversial results such as gentrification (Caramaschi 2020); some fail to observe diversity (Bragaglia and Caruso 2022; Estrada Grajales, Foth, and Mitchell 2018). Even so, T/T designs tend to appear inclusive (Crump 2020; Ferreri 2020). Such is the case with the best-known example of this approach – Park(ing) Day – which started with the temporary installation of a parklet on one on-street carparking space in San Francisco and evolved into an annual international event (Thorpe 2020).

Case study context and methods

Thus far, by reference to concepts narrated in a select literature, attention has been paid to how beneficial outcomes might arise from changes to universities and to temporary and tactical approaches to urban design. But what might a disconfirming case reveal? What happens when a university subject to structural change that involves relocating from suburb to city works with a capital city municipal government and others to develop a parklet proposal to benefit residents and visitors to the city but is challenged by those who view the project as objectionable because it removes on-street parking and appears outside the traditional remit of higher education organizations? How do those driving that change agenda then make sense of the fallout?

The case study is based in Australia and uses qualitative methods to focus on relationships between the University of Tasmania and other stakeholders based in Hobart, the state capital. The university has acquired significant amounts of property since the 2000s and is relocating operations from a suburban campus (Figure 1).² What follows is an examination of a proposal in the heart of the city’s retail precinct to construct the Melville Street parklet (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Location of Hobart and its current and planned main campuses. Image by Alice Robbins.

Figure 2. Midtown Parklet in Elizabeth Street was constructed by the City of Hobart (upper left). Melville Street Parklet on the corner of Elizabeth and Melville Streets was proposed by the University but not constructed (upper right). Image by Alice Robbins, incorporating photograph by Nicholas Jarman and rendering by RealmStudio for the University of Tasmania.

The parklet was to be outside new purpose-built student accommodation on roadways that fall under the City of Hobart’s remit. It would complement two other parklets with dining decks in nearby Elizabeth Street – a major retail precinct – that had been constructed by council the year before. The building opposite the proposed site has a multi-storey car park and 150 metres from a second such facility on the same street. Following wide-ranging consultation, and with the City’s full knowledge, the university commissioned RealmStudio Architects to produce a design for the Melville Street parklet, which would involve leasing 16 on-street car-parking spaces for five years from the City. The development application was lodged in late 2021 but shortly after the university withdrew the application and it was not considered by the City planning authority.

In early December 2021, following ethics clearance, participation in the research was asked of experts employed by or working for the university who were involved in the parklet proposal. Eleven individuals responded – eight from the university and three from external consultancies. Between February and March 2022, semi-structured interviews were conducted on Zoom and all 11 conversations were transcribed, member-checked, deidentified, and imported into NVivo.

Thematic analysis was completed and cross-checked. As with the interview questions, themes were informed by the literature and emerged from engaging with the transcripts. Words and phrases were coded, groups of codes were categorized, and ideas that both mapped onto the literature and exceeded it were considered (see Saldaña 2021). The process began with too many which were winnowed down in several writing sessions. Below, those themes are considered and reveal participants’ views on what led to the demise of the Melville Street parklet proposal in ways that help with the larger aim to grapple with and reflect on uneven geographies and power relations. Readers will note that no details are provided about participants; there being just 11, the risk of compromising their anonymity is too great and the ethics process had involved undertakings not to jeopardize their rights to that privacy.

University + parklet design = ? Findings from conversations with experts

This study engaged with experts because their knowledge can shape wider debates (Dunlop 2014), especially where people are working for common ends. Importantly, as Elsmore and Congreve (2022) have suggested, experts’ views can conflict and, in those differences, may reside crucial insights about why and how things work or go astray. Certainly, despite a common goal, participants held varied and sometimes opposing perspectives and those add to the depth and richness of the case study and its wider relevance. The thematic analysis ultimately pointed to three overarching dilemmas that may explain why the university was unable to secure and hold a social licence in relation to the parklet. Taking each in turn, findings from conversations with the experts involved suggest that the parklet became the site of a complex proxy war.

The parklet’s site-specific challenges

T/T urbanism is predicated on impermanence. Thus, it was interesting that one participant was sceptical about the practicality of designing what was, in fact, a relatively standard design for a parklet in terms of seating, plantings, and playful spaces (Figure 2). On gentle slope, it would be ‘exposed to the wind and traffic’ near the intersection with Elizabeth Street. However, the participant thought it should be ‘uphill directly outside of [the University’s new] building’ (#7) and suggested that the fixtures and fittings required of the design would make it ‘very difficult to take away’ (#7).

T/T urbanists also tend to focus on short-term interventions and experimental approaches to design. So, it was perhaps not surprising when another participant came to similar conclusions by referring to the Elizabeth Street parklets. To that person, those City of Hobart parklets appeared ‘to be permanent installations’, and felt contradictory to the idea in T/T projects that ‘if it doesn’t work, we change it … well it’s too f____g late now, they’ve concreted the b____y things in’ on Elizabeth Street (#1). Certainly, that participant advocated using a ‘planned and staged process’ by which to introduce smaller interventions into the streetscape so members of the public could ‘imagine a different use in that part of Melville Street [which] could gradually have built up to the parklet’ (#1). Such an approach is also in keeping with T/T methodologies. The idea that staged design might have helped was echoed by a third participant, who said ‘we could have been … more tactical [by working in ways] … that felt less overwhelming’ for others. They wondered whether ‘we went too hard, too fast [by] trying to challenge cycling infrastructure integration, the way people use streets … how they occupy streets … [or deal with] nature in the city’ (#3).

Thinking about the rapidity with which the university undertook design and development processes, another observed that, in general, ‘when testing is apparent … projects tend to be more successful’ (#1). They thought a more overt evaluation process would have allowed the team to say, ‘we are going to try this and there’s going to be a review after three months and a review after six months and then if it all works, we have agreed that the state government, the university, and the council are going to go thirds in funding’ (#1). That sentiment was echoed by another participant for whom an evaluation process would have allowed the team to ‘monitor things closely [so we were] ready to adapt’ (#11).

It is useful to recall that the university had started to acquired properties from the 2000s. As capital works discussions with governments were affected by political shifts and the covid pandemic, those properties stayed underutilized in highly visible ways. At newly constructed student accommodation located between Elizabeth and Melville Streets underutilization was also evident despite the development of a community garden and ‘a green strip [with] … basketball courts, ping pong tables, and trees’ (#10). Rather, the university needed to work at ‘occupying the spaces that they have already got’ and the parklet’s fate would have been different had the university produced more temporary designs for ‘buildings and sites that seem vacant’ (#7). Likewise, for any parklet to work, ‘there needs to be a critical mass of people … Perhaps a disruptive, tactical project that relies on activity and occupation of public space … is not the right move for now’ (#11) because covid was strongly in evidence.

Disruption, community (dis)engagement, and the media

The university’s community engagement processes for the parklet were disrupted because of the pandemic. Although lockdowns were rare and short in Tasmania, they also negatively affected retail trade and commerce ‘in the CBD, which made it easy for businesses to see the parklet as a negative’ (#2). Moreover, the parklet design was proposed and promoted ‘on the back of the construction of the Elizabeth Street parklets … and they [hadn’t thrived] because … they were established during covid’ (#7). A ‘covid support package [from the federal government] to help small businesses trade with social distancing’ also failed to make inroads in retailers’ concerns (#11).

The parklet proposal then became a social and cultural values contest ‘between progressive inner city green elements and more conservative suburban elements of the community’ (#2). The debate ‘became a trade-off between “we like green parklets” and “we want on-street parking”’ (#5). And that debate ‘became highly problematic because it polarized people [when a] … better framing of [the whole question] might have been [to ask] “how do we green the city and provide these spaces and retain the on-street parking or can they not exist together”?’ (#5).

The pandemic also exacerbated a more generalized response against what one participant described as ‘over-reach … everybody – government, university, business – has been told to get vaccinated, wear masks, stay at home … and they don’t want to be told what to do’ (#2) For that person, members of the public seemed to think the parklet design and consequential loss of parking was tantamount to ‘being told “don’t drive your car” into town’ during a time when ‘people don’t want to be in enclosed spaces’ such as buses (#2). For those living close enough to the city centre to walk, scoot, or cycle, the parklet might not be seen as negative but ‘for someone [in the outer suburbs] or someone who has a disability or who has small children [it felt like the parklet might work] against them’ (#2).

Notwithstanding the pandemic, the importance of community engagement in the university’s move into the Hobart CBD was underlined by 10 participants, especially because a growing number of media stories suggested the opposite (Jarman and Stratford 2023a). As one said, ‘you’ll often see the phrase “we want to be a university of and for the city” [in university leaflets and websites] … The city is the community that makes up the city … and we will be encouraging and developing features on the campus to encourage community engagement and community interaction with the university’ (#4). But for another, ‘just because you’re telling people you’re engaging with them … you don’t necessarily get people on side’ (#7). For a third, ‘all the community heard was “the university is taking all your carparking spaces, what do you think about that”?’ (#1). And one remarked that ‘people feel they have no say [in the parklet design so] … it’s met with friction’ (#3). In contradistinction to those views, however, one participant described how there had been ‘multiple conversations with and opportunities for people to engage in … a consultation process [although they] … were not necessarily engaged’ until near the time the development application was done (#8).

Then, some retailers came together with another group whose members were starting to protest both the university’s move to the city and regenerative urban design plans for its suburban campus.³ People began contacting the press and ‘making their views known publicly through Facebook rather than engaging in the processes we had set up to hear people’s views and for them to understand what we were seeking to achieve’ (#8). By that point, the media’s influence became pronounced (Jarman and Stratford 2023b). Local reporters prioritized some retailers’ protests about the loss of parking. Coverage was sufficiently sensationalized and effective that a decision was made to withdraw the development application from assessment (Jarman and Stratford 2023a). As one participant reflected, ‘I don’t think that anyone thought it was going to be as controversial as it was’, but the newspaper ‘is always looking for negative stories to sell papers’, and the university is ‘an easy target’ (#7).

Either way, opinions expressed in news and blog posts during the austral summer of 2021 puzzled at least one participant for whom it was nonsensical that ‘people are going on about [how] … the uni moving to the city will be bad for traders … The fact is that you [will] have more people in the city … it’s got to be a good for traders’ (#7). Another said, ‘retailers saw [the parklet] as a negative disruption … We thought it was going to be a positive disruption given all the research overseas’ (#4). Optimistic that the university could rebuild trust with the community … [and] particularly the business community”, a third wondered whether, in Hobart, ‘international evidence counts for very much’ (#8).

Some participants thought the ‘university had become a hostage to a narrative [produced by] … a small and noisy minority’ (#5) and had ‘underestimated [the power of] … resistance from a very small group’ (#6). One said, ‘we managed insufficiently to capture the positive voices and … the ratio of support to protest didn’t reflect reality. We tried to address that far too late in the game’ (#2). Another remarked that it was ‘absolutely not possible [to reduce the negative voices to zero but] … our response was … to simply withdraw that application’ instead of working ‘harder on matters of social licence’ (#4).

Competing priorities, social responsibility, and debates about the purposes of universities

Implementing the university’s long-term agendas to increase educational attainment, enhance placemaking, accessibility, and conviviality, and transform campuses and operations has not been smooth sailing. It is not alone in that experience, as the literature shows. However, during deliberations about the parklet those dynamics were complicated by pending local and federal government elections, which sharpened the need to resolve competing priorities.

In that light, six participants thought the university withdrew the parklet development application so its controversy would not affect other, larger developments. Thus, ‘the landscape shifted’ (#10) and ‘there was quite a bit of change … internally in the city council’, including among senior staff who had favoured the project (#8). Because the parklet was designed to occupy City of Hobart roadway, and because the council was heading for election mode a year out from October 2022, the ‘intrinsic planning risk’ (#4) no longer seemed worth the struggle. As one participant said, ‘people … are taking advantage of upcoming elections to create a profile … based on where there [is] perceived disruption and push back’ (#9). In the end, ‘there were more significant issues’ to attend to and a ‘a tactical decision was made to … defer [the parklet proposal] … and let the City of Hobart pick up this conversation … as part of its central city precinct plan’ (#5). In retrospect, two participants thought the university might have waited for that ‘precinct plan to come out’ (#6) because the parklet was meant to be ‘a lightning rod for change in the city’ and then became ‘collateral damage’ (#10).

Universities are also strictly regulated by governments, and there are stringent expectations on them to ensure they are socially responsible and contribute to making higher education attainable. In Tasmania, educational attainment rates are among the lowest in Australia, and that has become a lightning rod. The university’s transformation programme has been ‘predicated on the need to provide greater access to students who perhaps wouldn’t have seen a university [in their future] … That [is a] rationale for moving … to achieve that mission’ (#2). Yet, participants said that, with the main campus location in Sandy Bay, ‘we are invisible to a large section of the community’ (#4). On that basis, ‘community engagement … is particularly important’ (#6) and ‘putting education on display … putting research on display’ means bringing ‘activities down to the ground plane so that the community can … understand and engage with the university’ (#4).

In theory, then, because of its layout, the parklet could have been one way to open ‘things up … making [the organization] more porous and providing more spaces where people can engage’ (#6). It could have been one element of a more ambitious and inter-penetrable design to foster greater engagement with residents and visitors, but that prospect opened another significant set of debates about whether it is the university’s role to develop and activate public space. One participant said, ‘when you have an organization … that wants to engage with and create its own fabric in the city centre, that should be looked on positively’ (#9). Another said that ‘we did a few temporary things on [the northern campuses] … They [also] met with … community opposition, so it seems to be the experience of doing these things’ in Tasmania (#8).

Either way, the parklet proposal exemplifies the sorts of complications that may arise when a university spearheads T/T designs. Indeed, some members of the ‘community thought that our … leading and putting in the development application was an inappropriate role; this was the biggest problem’ (#2). That is not to say the participant thought the university should stop reimagining public spaces in the city or developing properties. Rather, had the parklet been ‘something put up by the City of Hobart the university could have come out strongly in support or said, “we will provide some money to help” … and that [would have been seen as] … an appropriate role’ (#2). Indeed, ‘the change of use of public space is seen by the community as a role for the government, particularly the local government’ (#2).

Several participants thought the parklet controversy was about larger issues related to ‘building antagonism about the university’s move’ (#7). Such ‘disaffection about [the campus] move from Sandy Bay was then focused on the parklet’ (#9). This simple, temporary design was, then, scuttled in the wake of years of discussion about ‘what the future of the campus was going to be and … about how it was all going to work out’ (#8). Thus, the university found itself facing ‘a dedicated and pretty tactical campaign … run by a small group of very vocal traders [protecting on-street parking] and [other prominent] individuals who were quite well organized’ (#6) in their focus on challenging changes to universities and higher education more generally.

Discussion and conclusion

In Hobart, the University of Tasmania’s Melville Street parklet proposal was meant to be a T/T project in a larger programme to relocate much of the organization’s southern operations into the central business district and redevelop Sandy Bay along regenerative design principles. The parklet was supposed to increase pedestrianization and create a convivial public space in a precinct adjoining new purpose-built student accommodation near the retail district. However, the proposal became a lightning rod, with some viewing it as more than an attempt to reimagine the purpose and function of a small section of the street. The unanticipated controversy required the university to prioritize, and the parklet was deferred, a casualty of a shifting social and political landscape in which some – but decidedly not all – members of the community felt that it was not the university’s role to be spearheading changes to city streets and public spaces. The findings resonate with those reported in the literature related to university transformations, to T/T urbanism, and to limited treatment by researchers on the interface between them, so an interesting gap is addressed here.

Returning to the first theme, in varied contexts, parklets’ internal designs and site-specificities are subject to tensions between the pull and appeal of impermanent interventions and traditional approaches intended to provide surety of land use – including codes related to, for example, on-street parking allocations (see Vallance and Edwards 2021). It has been established that parklet designs can also prove invaluable for T/T design qualities such as responsiveness, flexibility, and accessibility, all of which are important benefits to emphasize when design outcomes are uncertain – and that includes in more orthodox urban designs and masterplans (Coppens et al. 2021). And gradual implementation is important to the viability and evolution of any T/T design, the reception of each stage informing the next and improving any given project overall. As Lydon and Garcia (2015, 438) have observed, it is crucial to evaluate interventions ‘over days, weeks, months, even years’ because ‘if you are not measuring the impact, you are writing only half the story’.

Thinking again about the second theme related to disruption, community (dis)engagement, and the media, in many places around the world, the pandemic has exacerbated existing sociospatial inequalities (Hassen 2022; Law, Azzali, and Conejos 2021). So, while T/T urbanism is meant to be an emancipatory practice providing accessible and inclusive community spaces (Brenner 2017; Courage 2013; Guadalupi 2018), the parklet was proposed at a time when some were fearful about the effects of the pandemic on their livelihoods. For some even the loss of 16 on-street parking spaces was not to be contemplated – although that might have been the case given their documented claims about parking and private vehicle use being a birthright (Pojani and Sipe 2021).

Others were gearing up for significant electoral battles the quality of which was affected by uncertainties arising with the pandemic, a trend mirrored elsewhere (Cariello, Ferorelli, and Rotondo 2021; Gregg et al. 2022; Noland, Iacobucci, and Zhang 2022). But the pandemic was but one catalyst for disagreement. As one candidate running for the City of Hobart elections noted on her website: ‘UTAS will steamroll the small guy. UTAS is powerful and well-resourced and, combined with the authority available to the Hobart City Council, small businesses, residents, and community members could very easily find themselves trampled. UTAS’ application to take over Melville Street has already demonstrated this’ (Elliot 2021). Such views run contrary to those shared by expert participants. They also contrast with international research such as that by Rossini (2019), who studied tactical design interventions in Hong Kong and showed they revitalized public spaces and social relations among citizens in ways largely non-existent prior to the intervention.

Finally, in terms of the third theme related to competing priorities, social responsibility, and debates about the purposes of universities, T/T urbanism is one way that large organizational actors, including universities, can engage communities and transform the power relations underpinning the production of public space. Certainly, in Australia creating permeable and porous campuses has been described as a method to integrate universities into cities (Freestone and Pullan 2018; Saniga and Freestone 2018), but the complexities can be defeating – or at least disconcerting. Obviously, universities must operate in socially responsible and transparent ways by adhering to formalized structures and processes such as development applications. That may mean their capacities to enact meaningful changes in cities, irrespective of scale, cannot include much engagement with unconventional and experimental approaches that appear to others to overstep their purpose – but that would be a real loss of potential.

The paper started with an observation that a range of forces affect urban design, including structural changes to universities and an increase in the use of temporary and tactical approaches to streets and footpaths. In seeking to bring these two ostensibly unrelated forces together, the first aim was to examine what happened when the University of Tasmania’s parklet design proposal for the central business district of Hobart, Tasmania, ignited a significant controversy in which debates about what was good design and who could engage in design influenced the outcome. Different stakeholders were the focus of an earlier paper on the case (Jarman and Stratford 2023a); in this paper, analysis centred on how experts working in or for the university understood that controversy and explained how the university could not secure the social licence it needed to proceed with the parklet. Revealed in the process are two points: the inviolability of private vehicle use and on-street parking remained intact and changes to higher education and universities have become deeply unsettling for some.

Those insights informed a second aim to comprehend and reflect on the uneven geographies and power relations of a proxy war about urban space and the changing characteristics of universities in urban life. The concern then becomes this: given universities’ public mission for creative and critical thought, experimentation, and design thinking in its broadest sense, and noting that they have still-significant economic and intellectual resources at their disposal, what remains if universities must struggle to enact changes in cities and communities to which they are accountable? A return to the original argument thus suggests that universities’ potential in this respect will continue to be unmet if more people do not engage with the difficult realities of structural change in higher education and the need for them to enrol urban design to create infrastructures of innovation and care that advance societal needs.

Disclosure statement

Elaine Stratford is a full professor in the School of Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences at the University of Tasmania. For a part of each week, she is also seconded to Campus Futures in the Academic Division to undertake transformation research that directly relates to the research reported here.

Data availability statement

The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data are not available. The research received ethics clearance from the University of Tasmania (project number 26083).

Notes

1. Some writers use organization and institution interchangeably. Here, organizations denote structured groups associated for common ends. Institutions describe enduring societal systems, norms, and practices. Universities embrace both but, in this paper, they are referred to primarily as organizations.

2. The university also operates in two other cities in Tasmania – Launceston and Burnie, and in Sydney, New South Wales.

3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the significant debates that emerged in relation to the master plan for the university’s Sandy Bay campus, but see, for example, https://www.utas.edu.au/about/campuses/southern-transformation.