On long-abandoned city parcels in Boston's Lower Roxbury, a new housing complex—Davenport Commons and Shawmut Estates—opens to rave reviews. Developed by the city, three local nonprofit developers, and Northeastern University, the complex consists of apartment-style housing for nearly 600 students and 75 affordable home ownership units for community residents.

Across Boston, fifteen community health centers are supported by faculty members and students through the Center for Community Health Education, Research and Service (CCHERS), a partnership among the health centers, Northeastern, Boston University School of Medicine, and the Boston Public Health Commission. The partnership is dedicated to reducing health care disparities.

In Boston public schools, administrators and teachers work with professors at University of Massachusetts Boston and Northeastern on the Boston Science Partnership, a National Science Foundation-funded program to improve science teaching and learning in middle and high schools.

We discussed in the first essay in this series, the university-community partnership movement is well under way here in Boston. With support from city officials, business leaders, and nonprofit organizations, universities and communities are coming together to create affordable housing, promote urban health, and strengthen public education; and attend to such challenges as urban design, public safety, social justice, workforce development, and business creation.

This movement—years in the making—has had to overcome decades of adversarial relationships between town and gown. Urban communities have needed to see that the universities in their midst can be a competitive advantage in regional economic development. Universities have needed to see that local and regional vitality are keys to their institutional progress and that partnerships with host communities can enrich education and research.

The growth in university-community partnerships shows that these understandings are sinking in. In Boston, we now have the opportunity to build upon this progress in a comprehensive and creative fashion. Our goal should be to make university-community collaboration a central element of the city's plans for regional progress and an equally fundamental component of strategic plans for area universities.

We have much work to do to achieve such a goal, but the overarching strategies are clear. First, we must become more effective at sharing and replicating new ideas and best practices. The Davenport Commons complex represents an important if modest step in the creation of affordable housing. Perhaps more striking is how the project establishes a new method for financing housing development. Lessons can be drawn from this project that will inform real estate development elsewhere.

Second, we will support programming that enables students and professors to work in partnership with neighborhood organizations on projects that contribute to the quality of urban life while enhancing academic work. Through CCHERS, faculty members bring their expertise to bear on the challenge of community health while learning lessons that inform their scholarship. Students contribute to the community's well-being while gaining experience that reinforces their studies. This win-win formula can be, and should be, reproduced across the full range of urban issues.

Third, Northeastern will work with others colleges and universities to heighten our impact through inter-institutional collaboration and, where possible, by adopting industry-wide strategies. The Boston Science Partnership is strengthened by such teamwork. University partnerships with Boston public schools are widespread, and could be strengthened through greater university collaboration. Other priorities, such as helping Boston and other Massachusetts cities reduce their dependency on property taxes, merit a united higher education position.

Fourth, we will support organizations and processes that enable universities and cities to work together to find ways to advance their respective interests. One example is Boston's pilot program to establish community-based task forces to work with universities on their physical master plans. Others include Boston's Longwood Medical and Academic Area, and Harvard University's plans to develop its campus in Allston. These measures show promise in advancing infrastructure, transportation, skills training, and housing in the context of institutional growth.

Finally, we will encourage efforts by Greater Boston's universities, corporate sector, and government to develop research partnerships that contribute to economic and social progress while deepening scholarly understanding of the dynamics of regional development. This important theme will be explored in more detail in a subsequent essay.

Each of these strategies will be essential in driving our university-community partnership movement forward. A key throughout is the growing understanding in our neighborhoods, university campuses, government agencies, and corporate boardrooms, that we are, indeed, in a new era. The old town/gown paradigm that assumed a conflict of interest between universities and host communities is being set aside. A new paradigm that recognizes the fundamental alignment of interests is emerging. Universities and communities need to support each other as never before. In doing so, we will achieve something of lasting value for Boston and for higher education. And we will once again establish a model worth emulating in key regions across the country.

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