29 Small City Anchor Institutions • Feature • Bohannon and shared decision-making. Universities can make these capacities central to design education rather than peripheral. When students learn early on that design is as much about relationships and accountability as it is about form or technique, they enter practice better prepared to work collaboratively with communities. Another critical role universities can play is as honest brokers and conveners. Academic institutions can bring designers, municipal staff, community members, and other stakeholders into the same space in ways that feel less transactional and more exploratory. Universities often have the perceived neutrality and institutional support to convene difficult conversations about history, power, displacement, or environmental risk without immediately needing to produce a finished product. That convening role helps establish shared language and mutual understanding before design decisions are made. Universities can also elevate community knowledge as legitimate expertise. Through community-engaged research and teaching, academic institutions can help shift whose knowledge is valued and documented. Design research methods, such as participatory mapping, storytelling, and co-design, allow community knowledge to shape projects from the outset rather than being treated as feedback at the end. When universities model this approach, they help normalize more equitable designer–community relationships across the profession. Finally, universities can support collaboration by being reflective institutions themselves. That means asking hard questions about extractive practices, timelines that privilege academic calendars over community needs, and who ultimately benefits from engagement. When universities hold themselves accountable, by sharing credit, returning knowledge to communities, and sustaining relationships beyond a single project, they set a standard for ethical, collaborative practice. So for me, the role of universities isn’t to mediate design for communities, but to create the conditions where collaboration can genuinely take root. When universities invest in time, trust, and shared learning, they help designers and communities move from transactional relationships to true partnerships, ones Student work. Mary Cotterman. Bee Temporality. UVA School of Architecture.
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