The University of Northern Kuzbass Agglomeration: Campus as a Strategic Bet

Abstract

The article presents the concept of university campus of Northern Kuzbass agglomeration, emerging in Kuzbass in the context of the region’s transition on the path of sustainable development. The work provides an overview of successful practices in universities’ achieving significant local impact in terms of effective organization of the campus space. The peculiarities of the Russian context of universities’ turning to regions are noted. A hypothesis is formulated about the reasonableness of the regional university betting on development of campus infrastructure, which is supposed to initiate and support new formats of activities and practices as well as internal institutional changes. On the example of creating a world-level campus in Kemerovo there are shown possible changes in the university model, which allow to solve regional problems of supporting agglomerative development. The paper might be of interest as a case study when designing campus infrastructure development in the regions of Russia.