Let Knowledge Serve The City

Portland, Oregon. Sustainability might not seem glamourous, but Portland is making a name for itself as one of the most sustainable cities in the world. Whether you’ve heard about the farmers’ markets, the cycle-friendly streets or the ongoing efforts to balance livability and equity, Portland is leading the way in urban sustainability: this book helps us understand how it achieves this.A critical component of Portland’s success is collaboration between different communities and institutions; the Sustainable Solutions series examines higher education’s role in these partnerships. In exploring how best to “let knowledge serve the city”, Portland State University translates its founding motto from mere words to applied research and action.This first volume examines different approaches to collaborative work that PSU has taken, both within the university and with community partners: how have barriers been overcome between different areas of study, between academia and the public, and why is bridging these divides so important? It also introduces the themes of the engaged university, social justice, climate change and sustainable economic development, which shape PSU’s work.Let Knowledge Serve the City is ideal for anyone seeking best practice in connecting students and universities with the needs of local communities. From public interest design and student leadership, to food justice and age-friendly development, authors combine academically rigorous theories of sustainability and community-university partnerships with lessons learned on how to realize ideals of sustainable development.

The Sustainable Solutions series examines Portland State University, sharing best practice in community-engaged teaching and research with a sustainability focus. This volume looks at how barriers between disciplines and communities have been overcome, and introduces themes shaping PSU's work: justice, partnership and climate change.

What is the role of the university? Current systems may stress research output, but Wortham-Galvin, Allen, and Sherman seek to re-establish the importance of teaching and service in the work of the 21st-century university. The Sustainable Solutions series shares Portland State University’s experience of community-engaged teaching and research. With a focus on sustainability, we see that such collaboration is vital to making Portland one of the world’s most sustainable cities.Volume 2, University–Community Partnerships, builds on the themes introduced in Volume 1, Let Knowledge Serve the City, to explore how these partnerships play out in practice. Covering 13 projects, which range from supporting local artisans and researching food access, to sharing Indigenous history and decolonizing perceptions of knowledge, readers receive pragmatic advice on working with community organizations. Authors also offer critical reflection on how theories of engagement have structured PSU’s work and how their findings impact our very understanding of partnership.This reader-friendly text provides an ideal introduction to anyone wishing to learn more about models of effective collaboration and how to put these into practice. Explained through the context of specific projects, the book offers both inspiration and practical guidance to anyone — in local government, academia, or the third sector — looking to set up productive community–university partnerships.

Service learning, as defined by the editors, is the generation of knowledge that is of benefit to the community as a whole. This seventh volume in the Outreach Scholarship book series contributes a unique discussion of how service learning functions as a critical cornerstone of outreach scholarship. The sections and chapters of this book marshal evidence in support of the idea that undergraduate service learning, infused throughout the curriculum and coupled with outreach scholarship, is an integral means through which higher education can engage people and institutions of the communities of this nation in a manner that perpetuate civil society. The editors, through this series of models of service learning, make a powerful argument for the necessity of "engaged institutions".

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Engaged University is a comprehensive empirical account of the global civic engagement movement in higher education. In universities around the world, something extraordinary is underway. Mobilizing their human and intellectual resources, institutions of higher education are directly tackling community problems – combating poverty, improving public health, and restoring environmental quality. This book documents and analyzes this exciting trend through studies of civic engagement and social responsibility at twenty institutions worldwide. This timely volume offers three special contributions to the literature on higher education policy and practice: a historical overview of the founding purposes of universities, which almost invariably included a context-specific element of social purpose, together with a survey of how these "founding" intentions have fared in different systems of higher education; a contemporary account of the policy and practice of universities – all over the world – seeking to re-engage with this social purpose; and an overview of generic issues which emerge for the "engaged university."

Reading the Islamic City offers insights into the implications the practices of the Maliki school of Islamic law have for the inhabitants of the Islamic city, the madinah. The problematic term madinah fundamentally indicates a phenomenon of building, dwelling, and urban settlement patterns that evolved after the 7th century CE in the Maghrib (North Africa) and al-Andalusia (Spain). Madinah involves multiple contexts that have socio-religious functions and symbolic connotations related to the faith and practice of Islam, and can be viewed in terms of a number of critiques such as everyday lives, boundaries, utopias, and dystopias. The book considers Foucault's power/knowledge matrix as it applies to an erudite cadre of scholars and legal judgments in the realm of architecture and urbanism. It acknowledges the specificity of power/knowledge insofar as it provides a dominant framework to tackle property rights, custom, noise, privacy, and a host of other subjects. Scholars of urban studies, religion, history, and geography will greatly benefit from this vivid analysis of the relevance of the juridico-discursive practice of Maliki Law in a set of productive or formative discourses in the Islamic city.

Singer, Allison Starer, Wim Wiewel, Eugene L. Zdziarski II