The image which most clearly describes this kind of setting is the image of the traditional marketplace, where hundreds of tiny stalls, each one developing some specialty and unique flavor which can attract people by its genuine quality, are so arranged that a potential buyer can circulate freely, and examine the wares before he buys.
232
43 UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE
What would it mean to fashion the university after this model?
1. Anyone, can take a course. To begin with, in a university marketplace there are no admission procedures. Anyone, at any age, may come forward and seek to take a class. In effect, the “course catalog” of the university is published and circulated at large, in the newspapers and on radio, and posted in public places throughout the region.
2. Anyone can give a course. Similarly, in a university marketplace, anyone can come forward and offer a course. There is no hard and fast distinction between teachers and the rest of the citizenry. If people come forward to take the course, then it is established. There will certainly be groups of teachers banding together and offering interrelated classes; and teachers may set prerequisities and regulate enrollment however they see fit. But, like a true marketplace, the students create the demand. If over a period of time no one comes forward to take a professor’s course, then he must change his offering or find another way to make a living.
Many courses, once they are organized, can meet in homes and meeting rooms all across the town. But some will need more space or special equipment, and all the classes will need access to libraries and various other communal facilities. The university marketplace, then, needs a physical structure to support its social structure.
Certainly, a marketplace could never have the form of an isolated campus. Rather it would tend to be open and public, woven through the city, perhaps with one or two streets'where university facilities are concentrated.
In an early version of this pattern, written expressly for the University of Oregon in Eugene, we described in detail the physical setting which we believe complements the marketplace of ideas. We advised:
Make the university a collection of small buildings, situated along pedestrian paths, each containing one or two educational projects. Make all the horizontal circulation among these projects, in the public domain, at ground floor. This means that all projects open directly to a pedestrian path, and that the upper floors of buildings are connected directly to the ground, by stairs and entrances. Connect all the pedestrian paths, so that, like a marketplace, they form one major pedestrian system, with many entrances and openings off it. The over-
233
all result of this pattern, is that the environment becomes a collection of relatively low buildings, opening off a major system of pedestrian paths, each building containing a series of entrances and staircases, at about 50 foot intervals.
We still believe that this image of the university, as a marketplace scattered through the town, is correct. Most of these details are given by other patterns, in this book: building complex (95), pedestrian street (ioo), arcades (119), and open
STAIRS (158).
Finally, how should a university marketplace be administered? We don’t know. Certainly a voucher system where everyone has equal access to payment vouchers seems sensible. And some technique for balancing payment to class size is required, so teachers are not simply paid according to how many students they enroll. Furthermore, some kind of evaluation technique is needed, so that reliable information on courses and teachers filters out to the towns people.
There are several experiments going forward in higher education today which may help to solve these administrative questions. The Open University of England, the various “free” universities, such as Heliotrope in San Francisco, the 20 branches of the University Without Walls all over the United States, the university extension programs, which gear their courses entirely to working people—they are all examples of institutions experimenting with different aspects of the marketplace idea.
Therefore:
Establish the university as a marketplace of higher education. As a social conception this means that the university is open to people of all ages, on a full-time, part-time, or course by course basis. Anyone can offer a class. Anyone can take a class. Physically, the university marketplace has a central crossroads where its main buildings and offices are, and the meeting rooms and labs ripple out from this crossroads—at first concentrated in small buildings along pedestrian streets and then gradually becoming more dispersed and mixed with the town.
marketplace of ideas
» (2! p
open admission
scattered facilities
^ university crossroads
Give the university a promenade (31) at its central crossroads; and around the crossroads cluster the buildings along streets—building complex (95), pedestrian street (ioo). Give this central area access to quiet greens—quiet backs (59) ; and a normal distribution of housing—housing in between (48); as for the classes, wherever possible let them follow the model of master and apprentices (83). . . .
235
SUMMARY OF THE LANGUAGE
within the framework of the wings and their internal gradients of space and movement, define the most important areas and rooms. First, for a house;
136. couple’s realm
137. children’s realm
| 138. | SLEEPING TO THE EAST |
| 139* | FARMHOUSE KITCHEN |
| 140. | PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET |
| 141. | A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN |
| 142. | SEQUENCE OF SITTING SPACES |
| H3- | BED CLUSTER |
| H4- | BATHING ROOM |
| 14 5- | BULK STORAGE |
then the same for offices, workshops, and public buildings;
| I46. | FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE |
| H7- | COMMUNAL EATING |
| 148. | SMALL WORK GROUPS |
| ON 1—1 | RECEPTION WELCOMES YOU |
| 150. | A PLACE TO WAIT |
| 151. | SMALL MEETING ROOMS |
| 152. | HALF-PRIVATE OFFICE |
add those small outbuildings which must be slightly independent from the main structure, and put in the access from the upper stories to the street and gardens;
XXVI11
| 44- LOCAL TOWN HALL* |
|---|
 |
236
. . . according to community of 7000 (12), the political and economic life of the city breaks down into small, self-governing communities. In this case, the process of local government needs a physical place of work; and the design and placing of this physical place of work can help to create and to sustain the community of 7000 by acting as its physical and social focus.
Local government of communities and local control by the inhabitants, will only happen if each community has its own physical town hall which forms the nucleus of its political activity.
We have argued, in mosaic of subcultures (8), community of 7000 (12), and identifiable neighborhood (14), that every city needs to be made of self-governing groups, which exist at two different levels, the communities witli populations of 5000 to 10,000 and the neighborhoods with populations of 200 to 1000.
These groups will only have the political force to carry out their own, locally determined plans, if they have a share of the taxes which their inhabitants generate, and if the people in the groups have a genuine, daily possibility of access to the local government which represents them. Both require that each group has its own seat of government, no matter how modest, where the people of the neighborhood feel comfortable, and where they know that they can get results.