Anchoring (in) the region: the dynamics of university-engaged urban development in Newark, NJ, USA

Abstract

While academic and policy analyses have explored universities’ roles in urban regeneration and regional development, issues arising from intraurban collaboration and competition in multi-university city-regions have received scant attention. In response, this paper examines how higher education institutions (HEIs) connect and splinter urban space at multiple scales through a case study of Newark, NJ, USA. Newark’s attempts to reposition itself as a hub for university-enabled innovation disclose the complex ways in which the infrastructures of knowledge urbanism are implemented, negotiated, and spatialized at local and city-regional scales. The study’s multi-disciplinary analysis assesses the discourses, technologies, and territorial constellations through which HEIs (re)shape place and project urban peripheries into wider city-regional networks. The paper’s findings reveal an emergent and decentred ‘de facto’ form of university regionalism crystallizing in Greater New York that illustrates the need for robust, scalar-sensitive assessments of anchor institution strategies as they are articulated within broader regionalization processes.