21st Century Cities: Research from Temple

Shusterman Hall

November 3, 2006

Good morning.  It is wonderful to see so many of you here today. 

The topic of today’s conference, “21st Century Cities:  Research from Temple,” is very important and is close to my heart.  Last May, before I became president, I came to Temple to meet with faculty, staff, and students. I told them that, to me, Temple feels like coming home. I said this for a number of reasons; one of the most important is Temple’s central role in providing access to a world class education.

If I had not had access to a great urban public research university in my home city — in my case it was the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where I earned my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees while raising our four daughters with my husband Randy — I would not be standing in front of you today.  I value Temple’s role in Philadelphia and the region.  I believe in the University’s tradition of access and excellence, and in maintaining Temple’s momentum as we continue our push to be a leader among national urban research universities. 

Today’s program illustrates the tremendous breadth of urban research at Temple. Groundbreaking research is being conducted throughout the University, with top-notch urban research talent distributed among many of Temple’s schools, colleges, and campuses.

Some of the presenters are veteran faculty members, while others are among our newest hires.  For example, the afternoon program features Deborah Howe and Lindsey Bremner, two urban scholars who have just arrived at Temple.

Deborah Anne Howe is the new chair of the department of community and regional planning at Ambler College.  She has made major contributions as a researcher on the training and development needs of successful community planners.

Lindsay Bremner came to us all way from South Africa, where she was chair of architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg joined the Tyler School of Art’s department of architecture as its new chair.  She is a renowned expert on urban planning in post-apartheid South Africa.

In addition to these new faculty members, a number of today’s presenters are junior colleagues moving toward tenure. But the list of scheduled speakers barely begins to tap the urban expertise at Temple.  Dozens of other scholars with related interests can be found in Education, Social Administration, Communications and Theater, as well as virtually every other school and college at Temple.

While we have a wealth of talented individuals investigating urban trends, conditions, and problems, we must do a better job of mobilizing that talent to give Temple as an institution a strong role in advancing the city and the region through the creation and application of knowledge.  This is a role that Temple, as the region’s leading public research university, can fulfill more effectively, and we can be more vocal in emphasizing Temple’s importance in Philadelphia, the nation and the world.

Land grant universities were the makers of knowledge in the past century, urban research universities will be the incubators of the next century.  Temple is a great university embedded in a great city.  This dimension is so important to Temple’s future that it has been chosen as the theme of the presidential investiture events being planned for April 2007. 

The term “urban” no longer applies exclusively to city centers.  The study of urban issues has expanded to encompass metropolitan regions, as population and economic activities have spread from cities to the suburbs and to the “exurbs” farther out. The organization and goals of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce illustrates this reality. With suburban campuses in Ambler and Ft. Washington, a Center City campus, and two campuses on North Broad Street, Temple make contributions throughout the greater metropolitan area.

Consider, for example, the brilliant suburban flood zone mapping project conducted by faculty members at Ambler’s Center for Sustainable Communities.  This research alerted officials across a broad swath of Greater Philadelphia that the federal floodplain maps they are now using do not paint an accurate picture of the hazards that threaten their communities.  The Pennypack floodplain research received intensive national media coverage.

Another example is the very large and powerful information base amassed in recent years by the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project.  This asset tracks a hundred different quality-of-life indicators for residents in the Greater Philadelphia region.  This resource is available to all Temple researchers, and we hope it will develop into a strong analytical tool to assist political and community members in their decision making.

Through research projects like these, Temple can connect our region. As a public institution, Temple bears responsibility not only for educating the state’s young people, but also for helping policy makers in the southeastern region of the state to solve problems and build a sustainable future.

Temple’s innovative urban research also helps us make connections to urban institutions serving other metropolitan areas around the country.  We share common strengths and aspirations with other urban research universities.  We have lessons to teach, as well as lessons to learn.  Our scholars should be developing more collaborations with colleagues in other parts of the country, participating in multi-site research grants and contributing the data and insights developed at Temple to national conversations.  Through organizations such as the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, Temple can collaborate on an urban agenda that advances both our work and that of other urban public research institutions. Temple should be a leader among this new collation of urban serving universities.

Finally, in an era when local conditions are directly linked to global patterns, we must not restrict our work on urban trends and problems to the United States.  Today’s program reflects Temple’s global concerns and includes several scholars working on urban conditions in other parts of the world.  International research often requires fieldwork that is more complicated and costly than social research done at home.  However, Temple is better positioned than many similar institutions to place its faculty and students in distant regions of the world, by virtue of our programs and campuses across the world.

Today’s discussions represent only a beginning.  Building Temple’s urban research agenda will take more than identifying faculty members who are engaged in relevant research and inviting them to share their work.   It will take thinking carefully about how the university is organized to promote this kind of scholarship. 

What will it take to mobilize urban researchers at Temple?

• Do we have the right infrastructure to build and support interdisciplinary networks of faculty and students?

• Have we identified promising sources of external funding for their work?

• Are there specific gaps in faculty expertise that we need to fill by future hiring in particular colleges and departments? 

• Have we forged strong connections between faculty scholarship and instructional programs, so that our students can participate to the fullest extent possible in urban research programs?

• Does the University encourage and support rigorous inquiry on the application of new knowledge gained on the problems we face in our complex urban environment?

These are important discussions for us to begin — and to begin today.  Thank you all for being here today to share your own work and to learn about the work of your colleagues.

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