Our Vice-Chancellor

In the rest of this century, I suspect that getting our cities right will be one of the most pressing of the many lines of research that universities will have to engage with. Why would I make such a strong statement?

Why universities have taken on some of the activities that are now associated with them is sometimes close to anyone’s guess. I am not writing here about the 19th century sporting add-ons in the shape of Walter Camp and college football or the two Charles’s–Merivale and Wordsworth–and the boat race. Nor am I talking about events like the great expansion of research after the Second World War.