“What is the untapped potential of post-secondary campus infrastructure projects in building social infrastructure for Canadian communities?”
This paper seeks to answer this question, in response to growing interest across the Canadian post-secondary sector to utilize campus infrastructure (current and future) for societal benefit.
This paper offers a call to action for leaders, administrators, and the entire campus community to fully mobilize institutional assets, relationships, resources, and platforms to help communities and overall society bring about a flourishing future. It invites infrastructure builders to double down on their ambitions to leverage their projects for still greater scale and impact. It argues for a pivot in infrastructure development, where institutions and their communities identify a social purpose for the project at the outset, one that is outward-looking, fosters societal benefits throughout the planning and construction process, and goes beyond meeting the core functional needs of the university to also meeting the needs of community and society.
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