This article was written by Alix Linaker, Canadian network coordinator, and Duane Elverum, executive director, at CityStudio Vancouver.

Around the world, city governments are struggling to understand and solve the complex challenges of our time, and are facing the need to transform themselves to operate within the earth’s carrying capacity.

These challenges include population, housing, energy, equity, climate change, transportation, health, waste and water issues to name a few. These mega-trends cause disruptions that affect all aspects of society: where people live, what they eat, and how they work and move.

Many cities have strategic plans to meet these challenges, but need — and would welcome — support to reach their goals.

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Increasingly, post-secondary institutions, such as universities, colleges and vocational schools, are stepping up to help them. These educational institutions are incubators of new and innovative ideas, and that’s what we need to solve the challenges cities face.

However, traditionally there has been no widely shared standardised, comprehensive and transferable method for cities and post-secondary institutions to collaborate at a strategic level over the long-term.

This may be due to a variety of factors, including misaligned strategic goals, jurisdictional responsibilities, high turnover of key personnel, and transactional and lower-level disputes over issues such as land use, noise and transportation.

Despite this, some positive examples of collaborations do exist — for example, MetroLab Network and NYC Solar Map and Portal — but collaborative models that are designed for systemic change and longevity are still few and far between.

“What would cities look and feel like if city government and post-secondary institutions collaborated every day for civic benefit, prioritising this collaboration as a part of a city’s daily operations?”

This raises a key question: what would cities look and feel like if city government and post-secondary institutions collaborated every day for civic benefit, prioritising this collaboration as a part of a city’s daily operations?

About CityStudio

Entering its ninth year, CityStudio is an active player in the global movement of cities working together with post-secondary institutions for civic benefit.

We have created a model that aims to facilitate collaboration through an institutional partnership framework. The goal of this framework is to facilitate course- and research-based projects that are relevant to the students and faculty, while also speaking to a city’s strategy and challenges.

In this way, it is boundary-spanning and increases the capacity of cities to tackle issues through an efficient and reliable problem distribution framework.

By working together, the pool of civic problem-solvers is widened to include researchers, faculty experts, students and residents.

It also addresses three civic needs simultaneously: city staff receive increased capacity to solve problems; the community is engaged in building their own city; and students develop valuable skills and professional networks for future employment.

But how, exactly, does this collaboration work?

The annual cycle: a five-step process

The framework follows an annual cycle, which consists of five steps:

  1. Convene city staff. First, city staff are convened to identify and develop project ideas that further the city’s strategic aims. For example, projects to enhance social inclusion in communities, increase neighbourhood resilience, decrease stigma around mental health, decrease residents’ carbon footprints and increase voter turnout. This meeting is organised and facilitated by a project coordinator.
  2. Match projects with schools. Second, project ideas are matched with courses at partner schools, ensuring a strong fit between city needs and faculty expertise.
  3. Design projects together. As part of their coursework, students work together with city staff (for class credit) to scope and co-create neighbourhood-based projects.
  4. Launch projects in public. Students launch projects in public as experiments, prototypes, pilots or engagement events in order to test what works.
  5. Share and scale projects. The results are presented at a celebratory showcase inside City Hall, where city staff, faculty, citizens, elected officials, students and their families connect to discuss how these projects can inform next steps or become permanent solutions for the city.

Impact

By working together, students, faculty and city staff have the potential to create significant impact.

For example, in Vancouver alone, this past year saw 36 courses resulting in 234 projects, while engaging 41 city staff, 864 students and 46 faculty.

Further, the transferability and flexibility of this framework means it is not limited to campus-based courses and can be adapted for applied research projects and new program development.

There are many noteworthy examples of past Vancouver projects focused on a range of topics aligned with the City of Vancouver’s strategic aims, including: climate emergency, equity and inclusion, food security, health and wellbeing, transportation, public spaces, lighter carbon footprints, urban community and urban ecology.

Beyond the numbers, the results of our six-year impact survey show that city staff are better able to look for creative engagement opportunities for students to help identify and solve challenges, and to recognise the influential role students can have in affecting systemic change in certain city services and planning areas.

Systemic change demands that our public institutions work together more easily and more often, and, while it is frequently perceived to be constrained by funding or technology, the CityStudio model demonstrates that a primary driver in systems change work can be relational. In other words, how institutions organise themselves to share problems, test solutions and develop policy together.

CityStudio is an example of a social innovation contributing to the way cities and post-secondary institutions work together for civic benefit.

Foundation for collaboration

The foundation of the CityStudio model is comprised of the cultivation of trust-based relationships, strong buy-in and commitment from leadership, and projects that are organised and hosted by a project coordinator.

This project coordinator plays the key role of matchmaker, finding relevant city projects that align with courses and faculty interest at the school(s). This saves time and resources for the city and school(s) as the need for individual outreach is eliminated.

It is critical that the project coordinator establishes trust-based relationships with interested partners prior to projects starting. Without a basis of solid relationships, quality project development, matching and implementation are not sustainable.

For this reason, the project coordinator first seeks connections with city staff and leadership who have expressed openness and excitement around civic innovation and collaboration.

It is important to consider if leaders, city staff and faculty understand experiential service learning and if connections to faculty running project-based courses already exist.

Leadership buy-in and commitment

When assessing a city’s readiness to collaborate with post-secondary institutions, we use a Readiness Assessment Checklist; it highlights the importance of having top leadership at both the city (i.e. mayor, deputy mayor and/or city manager) and post-secondary institution(s) (i.e. president, VP academic or VP external) committed to the collaboration, signalled through a signed MOU.

“Buy-in from leadership levels is key for a strong and lasting institutional partnership”

Buy-in from leadership levels is key for a strong and lasting institutional partnership.

Today, 55% of the world's population lives in cities, a number that is expected to reach 68% by 2050. City residents are on the frontlines of the numerous problems we are facing this century.

The capacity and willingness of city governments and post-secondary institutions to collaborate will be a key factor for our success in solving these problems and ensuring the long-term vitality of our planet.

— Alix Linaker

Picture credit: TimJ on Unsplash