University researchers and educators can benefit from using Urban Rooms as mechanisms to form partnerships with community groups and initiatives, and with civic organisations. The Urban Room creates a space for encounter, conversation and collaboration in the local city or town, outside the often hard to access spaces of the university campus. This space can host educational activities, presentations, exhibitions, debates and workshops.

The Urban Room can become a catalyst and a venue for knowledge exchange if designed and operated as a space for mutually beneficial projects between the community and the university. The focus on the built environment lends itself well to the Urban Room being
hosted by architecture, urban design and planning departments, however other departments such as archaeology, education, history, computer science and public health may also benefit from the city collaborations that an Urban Room can foster. An Urban Room offers a situated project-based approach to teaching and research and so can encourage a more interdisciplinary approach to civic engagement.