Public universities as real estate developers in the age of “the art of the deal”

Abstract

Abstract It is widely known that universities can be significant players in urban development and, to fund development, some universities have become players in the new financial markets of interest-rate swaps and similar securities. Even in these studies, however, it is rare for university governance to be studied systematically. This article analyzes the capital projects processes of public universities in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to shed light on the political effects—on both internal governance and the public interest—of techniques used to plan, approve, and especially to fund capital projects. A key finding is that the scale at which projects are planned, described, financed, and authorized—the scale of the isolated “deal”—has negative effects on both intra-university inequities and intergenerational justice, but these effects are difficult to see precisely because of the built-in features of “the art of the deal.”