"Place" on the post-pandemic campus (2021

Late summer 2021, U.C. Berkeley: The pandemic we thought was behind us has returned to torment us as variants. The students have returned and are likely to pass these variants back and forth. Most of those stricken will suffer what amounts to a bad flu—but, given the size of the campus population, we can expect some deaths. For once, the campus is ahead of the region’s tech industry, which put the brakes on a return to physical workplaces. Debates continue about the costs and benefits of working remotely.

The university is engaged with two large housing projects south and west of the campus proper, along with a new college replacing Tolman Hall opposite Arch Street along Hearst Avenue. All three reflect current thinking on academic development, which is to say that all three look back more than they look around or ahead. Given that buildings like this are intended to last for generations—Tolman Hall only lasted 70 years, a relatively short lifespan by campus standards—the future in question extends at least to 2100. We’ll be long dead when they get there, but the century’s end is a sober reminder that whatever we build now will still be here then.

Accurately predicting the campus's immediate future in light of the pandemic is challenged by the daunting range of issues that have surfaced. Much that seemed fixed as inherently place-bound proved not to be, and the detachment from place proved liberating in removing brutal commutes and allowing some families to rebalance work with the needs of young children. Others chose to quit cities in search of less expensive options, especially for housing. A new divide opened up between the relatively affluent and those below that crucial, shifting threshold. Climate change, with its attendant extreme weather events, wildfires, and droughts, made some of the moves to the country problematic for the affluent and poor alike. But the point was made: place matters, but “where” is a looser construct, less justifiably mandatory for participants.

The pandemic revealed two things about a U.C. Berkeley community that had almost entirely shifted online: first, routine collegial engagement went far beyond the normal boundaries of the campus; and second, the introduction of “higher production values” in some talks and lectures, leveraging the medium; and the relative intimacy that the medium itself provided, gave participants a clearer

sense of the speakers and of each other. Something was lost, of course—the spontaneity of interaction in a seminar room, for example, and the side chats and banter that pervade campus settings. And the virtual interface has limits, especially for large gatherings. But a hybrid approach to research and teaching, as opposed to a purely place-based one, is clearly feasible.

So, something has been gained that it would be a mistake to lose. Part of it is leverage, the ability of the university to accommodate a larger cohort without necessarily burdening the physical campus, the wider community, and the region. Given that a campus population of 70,000 was mooted just prior to the pandemic, such leverage may be crucial to address current distortions imposed by the decline of full tuition–paying students from abroad, which was already evident before the pandemic due to political tensions.

Decisions now being made about new campus buildings—capital projects that can be reasonably expected to support the university’s teaching and research activities for decades—speak to conventional, business-as-usual approaches. But something more radical will be needed to ensure that U.C. Berkeley is still among the world's leading public research universities in 2100. It starts with taking seriously the reality that the university is a networked organization within a much wider network. The flatness, fluidity, and openness this implies radically alter how the university will operates. It points to an eco-systemic view of it as a real/virtual construct, accepting as given an interconnectedness that transcends local space and time. The university’s historic campus and environs are real places that anchor a local community. Overlaying them is a vast network of academic and research communities—peer organizations that are also place-centered, with buildings and campuses to plan and tend. Rooted in their own localities, they share U.C. Berkeley's need to leverage the central lesson of the pandemic: place may still matter, but a hybrid future is inevitable, just as it is for the office workplace.

Not only are these different organizations comparing notes, but they’re aware that pandemics—like the effects of climate change— are recurring in ever-faster cycles. Hedging campuses against their disruptions should be part of any serious plan for their resilience.

The pandemic more or less inverted the previous hierarchy between real places and the parallel virtual realm that came along with us no matter where we were. That realm became the locus of

our interactions, interspersed with brief forays into the truly local or longer retreats to places truly distant. We've now resumed a wary relationship with many of the places that the pandemic walled off. Being walled off, we came to see these places as optional: potentially desirable for what they offer, but no longer mandatory. When bosses tried to insist, many headed for the door. Organizations ready to be hybrid were there to welcome them—with a new-found advantage.

Even before the pandemic, many campuses were encouraging a richer mix of activities in their immediate vicinity. The pandemic showed the desirability of doing this, as the truly local gained importance. It also showed how the relative malleability of local buildings and settings, their potential to accommodate change. Time proved malleable when organizations mastered it. Too many tried to maintain their pre-pandemic schedules, missing the point.

Scaling up by addition or replacement still how most campuses transform. Both are under way at U.C. Berkeley, but they raise the question, What’s the aim? Is it to build or is it to transform—a verb that implies opening out to the future? The U.C. Berkeley Campus, given loose precincts and porous edges by its early planners, is an example of a successful framework for constant evolution. As the campus moves into its third decade in this networked century, whatever it builds or renovates needs to situate itself in a framework that's now as much virtual as real—an augmented reality that will reshape how people relate to it, spatially and otherwise.

Written with Emily B. Marthinesen and Richard Bender for Common Edge, 13 September 2021. This version is edited to sharpen and clarify some points.