Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies Department Needs increased funding from New Jersey

Contact Updated 06/12/2007 10:17:27 AM About Camden Land and Dream Home

To: New Jersey Governor Corzine, the New Jersey Legislature, Susan Bass-Levin - Commissioner Community Affairs Re: Budget Cuts, Urban Studies Department, Rutgers-Camden. The budget cuts not only wipe out any benefits Rutgers - Camden received from the Municipal Rehabilitation and Economic Recovery Act, 2002 but takes away plenty more, while Rutgers mission in Camden is more demanding than ever.

From: Michael McAteer

To The Above:

I understand the necessity of Gov. Corzine’s higher education budget policy.

I also appreciate that you are probably being inundated with requests from those asking that their pet projects be spared.

This is one of those letters.

The City of Camden has been designated as a state supervised zone that is outside the normal interest and business of the state, to be considered in all matters separate from the rest of New Jersey ’s municipalities. I believe this has been declared and ordered by the Municipal Rehabilitation and Economic Recovery Act, 2002
( Or, for the purpose of this letter, I prefer the original title “Camden Rehabilitation and Economic Recovery Act”)

The act implies an intention, among others, that Camden not be covered by blanket budget policies that concern other municipalities and their institutions. Neither should Camden be considered as another municipality with its hand out to the state. In a sense, as a result of the act, Camden is no longer a municipality, per se, of the state. It is the state.

Though Rutgers-Camden may not have special status within the statewide institutional framework of Rutgers University , in this case special status consideration is required within the framework of the Camden Rehabilitation and Economic Recovery Act. (CRERA)

Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies is a small department finding its voice in the CRERA solution mix, and focusing its energies toward developing leaders in the community with the educational background to make decisions and influence policy on an informed basis.

Rutgers Urban Studies department is not only superbly qualified to develop Camden ’s future urban affairs leaders; it is the only permanent center doing so. Its outstanding faculty is chaired by a Fulbright Scholar.

In addition to attracting traditional young students, the department is attracting adult students, former and current residents of Camden , who have intimate knowledge and living memories of Camden ’s history. They bring with them valuable life experience that cannot be extracted from traditional students. These non-traditional students are developing skills and knowledge with the intention of applying it in the city.

Under-funding the department forces Camden to rely on paid limited time consultants, transitory committees and remote centers for state of the art knowledge. Even the CRERA itself is transitory, due to expire in 1-2 years.

Rutgers-Camden was in operation for more than seventy-five years before the CRERA and will be there long after. It is the only logical permanent place to evolve Urban Policy tailored to and readily accessible by the city, and help guide it through all phases. Keeping the department small through current funding denies the city a strong daily presence of much needed urban innovators and practitioners in America ’s greatest urban revitalization challenge.

From a purely academic point of view, Camden is currently the best laboratory for inner city urban research in the U.S. and is center stage in that field. The city is taught as a case study at Harvard and Public Policy departments across the nation. The eyes of Urban Studies departments coast to coast are spotlighting Camden . And the Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies department can fly or flounder in that light.

All things considered, not expanding the department does not make sense. Even more so when Camden is also garnering attention as America ’s most dangerous and second most impoverished city. This reflects terribly on the state, and is not without a variety of costs to the state. This is a situation that demands resolution as soon as possible.

Reducing its budget could be a crippling body blow. Cutting funding would be contrary to the intention of the CRERA legislation which calls for Rutgers involvement in the Recovery. In this context, under-funding, of all things, Camden ’s one permanent existing center for Urban Studies is an oversight that weakens and impedes the intentions, interest and purpose of the state’s enactment of the CRERA.

Furthermore, the department is already too small to have as much impact as the state expects. If anything, the department needs to be expanded, not shrunk.

For example, the department does not offer courses on intermodal commuter transportation or Transportation Oriented Development, (TOD) which is a central element of the states Smart Growth Plan. Camden is acknowledged in relevant circles as the logical destination for TOD in the sprawl containment goals of the Plan relative to South Jersey . Camden can also play an important role in alleviating sprawl in areas surrounding Philadelphia by maximizing opportunities for attractive, elegant high density residential development downtown, around it's three PATCO stations and numerous vast empty lots and abandoned industrial sites. Camden TOD and many other plans are outsourced to expensive consultants. All cities have an endless need for new plans. In Camden ’s current state, this will require more expensive consultants from remote centers.

A well funded and developed Urban Studies department, present in the city’s information and feedback flow 24/7 could actually be a net savings to the state if it becomes the first stop on planning issues, reducing the need for expensive consulting.

In addition to the lack of transportation studies, the department offers only three design related courses, all general in nature and none specific to urban forms needed in Camden .

From a strictly institutional need to attract desirable students, the lack of subject offerings and funding support puts Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies department at a great competitive disadvantage against nearby Temple , U of Penn and Drexel

Also, the Urban Studies department is to take a leadership role in the Waterfront Central District development, a very important area, one of the few expected to lead the city’s growth. This is a greatly expanded role for an already small department, a department that is in the service of the state, considering that Camden is under state takeover legislation.

Any cut to Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies department is pennywise and pound foolish, as well as contrary to the takeover legislation’s stated goals. The state cannot achieve its goal of a Camden future free of state bailouts while reducing the number of weapons in its arsenal to do so. It is commonly believed that the root of Camden ’s problems is a lack of well developed human capital in the city. Universities are nothing if not fulfilling their mission of manufacturing human capital. This is one manufacturing sector the city cannot afford to have diminished.

Government alone cannot solve Camden ’s problems. NPO’s, NGO’s, and entrepreneurs are now recognized as an integral and required part of any inner city solution mix. People are not born with skills in these areas but need to be developed through the higher education system like all other professions.

Please do not let “Camden Fatigue” or perceived slow progress under the CRERA negatively influence your thinking. Since becoming a state zone, the governor’s chair has had four governors in just about as many years, leaving the recovery Act leaderless at the very top. The program has never had the guidance from Trenton it promised. Now that the governorship situation has stabilized, it would be a cruel irony that any aspect of the program be diminished from that chair.

Much of Camden may not be very pretty, but neither are pork bellies. Camden real estate appreciated 81% in the last two years, while pork belly futures returned less than 10% over the same period. These returns are beginning to make headlines. Only gold outperformed Camden last year.

The city is on a respirator, struggling to live. But indicators for the city are good: Camden ’s high rate of return is making headlines. Finally we have a governor who can fully execute the recovery plan. Nationally cities with subways connected to major metropolitan areas in this age of high gas prices are being targeted for TOD by private developers. Camden ’s low cost real estate is surrounded by a sea of overpriced and unaffordable real estate. With these and various other strong national trends in urban areas, it is certainly time to pull out all stops for the CRERA or chance missing an era of opportunity. However, it cannot seize the moment without able leadership. Needed are educated and informed practitioners at every point in the mix to mediate the dynamic and complex issues, stresses, communications and interactions that could take place in an urban transformation challenge of this magnitude.

Supporting Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies program serves the interests of taxpayers statewide who are tired of seeing their hard earned money go to support Camden . Surely most of them would agree that as long as Camden lacks educated competent people in responsible positions and a viable center to develop those people, Camden cannot move forward.

The Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies program is engaged in research to eliminate Camden ’s dependence on county and statewide taxpayers for tens of millions in annual subsidies. The state has provided the city with over $250 million ( includes CRERA $175 million ) from tax payers beyond the city’s borders in the last four years. In a sense the Rutgers-Camden Urban Studies department is an agent of these taxpayers, as it seeks ways to make Camden self-supporting and keep taxpayers money where they like it – in their pockets.

In reality, the program needs to be expanded beyond its present size to be whole, to fully serve the needs and expectations of students, and the needs of the city. This expansion should include at the least the institution of TOD and intermodal transportation classes. Also, sufficient faculty and staff, as well as adjunct professors who are practitioners and recognized experts in the field. A modest number of full-ride leadership scholarships are necessary to attract desirable students from competing universities.

Without training in TOD an urban education is incomplete. A few more design and New Urbanism classes are needed to round out the program.

Next year the Congress for New Urbanism will be holding its annual convention in Philadelphia , bringing close to 1,500 of the worlds leading Urban Renewal experts to the area for four days. Camden is certain to be one of the numerous lab studies. Will it reveal a city “beyond hope” as leading Urbanist David Rusk calls it, or reveal a city with progressive institutions and leadership? Who will engage the CNU next year? The CNU and its 1,500 Public Policy and Urban Design professionals will be impervious to glossy local and state boosterism, and will “call it like they see it.” How the CNU views the Camden renewal effort is how the rest of the U.S. and the world will see it, and the effect could be as profound as the Morgan-Quinto ratings. By association and the high degree of oversight, the state of New Jersey will also receive a national judgment.

Considering Rutgers-Camden in a special light is justified from a variety of sensible perspectives. In addition, the CRERA essentially requires it.

Your support is appreciated for adequate funding of this vital program.

Support of this department expansion would reinforce the integrity of a small but dedicated university department with an outstanding faculty and an important mission.

Yours truly,

Michael McAteer

( A prospective non-traditional student considering Temple and Rutgers-Camden )