mercoledì 25 marzo 2009

Cities and Universities

One of the leading themes of 2009 IUFA conference will be the relationship between the urban context and the University. The US tradition in terms of universities as urban developers (as described by this interesting book) and as tech-transfer engines (especially described in this paper) set a different scenario from the European context, where there is a prevailing urban pattern of mid-range cities; there is a clear difficulty to adopt a world-class "MIT-like" research model in regions lacking high-level standards of innovation; there is a prevalence of tacit exchanges of knowledge between small and medium-sized firms and academic instutions.
The US University system provides good lessons in the tech-transfer relationship between academia and the local context, but should be carefully adapted to the European University context (as stressed in this paper). Please consider also this paper on the relationship between the University and the City in the context of Bologna (here)