ABSTRACT
In 2006, the University of Pennsylvania adopted a strategy formulated two years earlier, the Penn Compact, to focus the university on addressing major and complex global challenges, but it also explicitly articulated the responsibility the university has to its local community in doing so. The strategy recognised that decisions on land use, building design or academic delivery has social, employment and physical consequences for the urban context of the university. The globalisation of education has encouraged universities to shift towards a shared – rather than divided – understanding of the continuum of teaching and research. Universities recognise that their campus is the place where it can engage with their communities and thus deliver on a broader and more public mission. The physical environment in which the learning takes place is more than a passive context; it can be engaged as an active teaching tool.
