Around 80,000 students study in Ghent. That is just about the entire population of a medium-sized provincial city. Add to that the many people who work directly or indirectly for the colleges and universities and you immediately get an idea of the great importance of the city. The higher education institutions obviously bring in a lot, but also create a lot of pressure on the city. At the level of the institutions, there is well-structured consultation with the city, but at the level of the relationship between the university and the neighbourhood, there is mostly a kind of juxtaposition or non-relation. The institutions are hardly equipped to enter into the conversation. Between campus and neighbourhood is mainly a fence that, even when open, should make clear where the boundary lies between the two worlds.

In this track, we will look for handles for a more articulated connection between campus and city. Can you address institutions as neighbours? And what response do you get back? And what about the relationship between the institution and the many communities that universities and colleges have: students, technical staff, and professors from all kinds of fields and with different personal backgrounds? What role can they take on as active residents and users of the campus?

This track is in full start-up, but builds on a series of activities developed in recent years in the lap of the city academy or by partners active within the city academy. Each of these initiatives confronts the universities and colleges with their responsibility as urban actors with an important presence in the city. As institutions, what do they give back to the urban context in which they operate? How do the different campuses relate to the neighbourhoods they are part of? Are the users of those campuses good neighbours? And vice versa, what does the neighbourhood contribute to life on campus?