Student Housing Choices and Neighborhood Change: Brown University 1937–1987

Abstract

The formal ambitions and societal expectations of anchor institutions have shifted over time. Many universities have evolved from walled-off enclaves, to self-interested urban redevelopers, to mutual gain negotiators. Detailed accounts exist of universities, as anchor institutions, directly displacing low-income communities of color by utilizing the higher education provisions of urban renewal. This case study of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, adds to this history by documenting the university’s contribution to the diminution of a working-class neighborhood of color specifically through student residency philosophies and policies, enrollment expansion, and real-estate decisions, during 1937–1987. Brown University’s choices played out in a neighborhood already scarred by interstate highway construction and urban renewal. Drawing from primary source materials on institutional decision-making this work examines the transformation of Brown University’s models of student housing amidst evolving community concerns about the demolition of historic properties and push back around increasing displacement pressures. Several issues and research directions for the new era of equity centered anchor work emerge from this historical recounting of an anchor institution’s student housing choices.