City-campus-region: universities, economic development and city building with special reference to Fort Hare and Buffalo city

Although questions of who has access to higher education are important, it is also crucial to start to rethink the role of universities as social and developmental agents in South African society more generally. This book will explore the connections between rust belt cities and universities with specific reference to the social and developmental roles that higher education institutions can play, through an extended case study of the East London city-region in the Eastern Cape in South Africa and the University of Fort Hare. The study is commissioned by the Ford Foundation and explicitly seeks to consider whether recent developments in America and Europe in relation to campus/city dynamics have any relevance in South Africa and the Eastern Cape. It is anticipated that once South Africa achieves greater equity of access to higher education, the debate will focus (again) on the role of universities in place-making, city building and development. The study is set against the centenary celebrations of the University of Fort Hare, South Africa���s oldest historically black university, which has a long, engaged history of struggle for societal change. But instead of focusing predominately on how Fort Hare has changed and developed over the years, the emphasis in this book is on the transformation of the city-region within which it is located. After an extensive, comparative analysis of the city-region in the Eastern Cape the turns to to Fort Hare and its potential future role.