Neighbors
People often assume that the University of Minnesota Twin Cities consists of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul campuses, and that the two are separated by the Mississippi River. In fact, the UM-TC consists of three locations: Saint Paul, Minneapolis East Bank, and Minneapolis West Bank; and it's the East and West Banks that are separated by the river. The West Bank campus houses the social science and arts departments of the College of Liberal Arts, the Law School, the Carlson School of Management, the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, and Wilson Library (where the U Libraries has its headquarters). Most of us who have been around the U for a while manage to keep that much in our heads.
We tend to forget that we have other neighbors on the West Bank (also known as Cedar-Riverside, after the intersection of its two main streets), including the Riverside Campus of the Fairview-University Medical Center, Augsburg College, and the largest Somali population outside of Somalia along with many other East African, Asian, and Hispanic immigrants. The West Bank has for many years been a locus of settlement for immigrant groups, the Somalis being the latest. (See my June 2, 2006 blog "Public History as Theater".)
I was reminded of these other neighbors yesterday, when we had a get-acquainted meeting between the new President of Augsburg, Paul Pribbenow; the President of the University of Minnesota, Bob Bruininks; and several administrators from each institution who are concerned with community relations and civic engagement. Augsburg has a long-standing tradition of focusing on public education and immigrant issues, and the University of Minnesota also has numerous engagement initiatives on the West Bank, so we identified many possibilities for collaborative work. These range from service-learning and community service to making the Cedar light rail station more hospitable.
But we at the U can sometimes forget how big our footprint is. We're currently planning a new Fairview-University Children's Hospital on the West Bank, which will have a major impact on the neighborhood: land use, housing, traffic and transportation, population density, etc. The new hospital will be a great addition to the children's health capabilities of the Twin Cities; but I have the sense that the planning—which thus far has mainly involved the medical community and the U's Academic Health Center—has not yet taken much into account the concerns of our West Bank neighbors. I hope that will change, going forward.