EPA guides communities towards smart school locations

In the age of auto-dominated development, school construction standards require extremely large lots, often pushing their locations to the edges of cities and towns. Thankfully, the EPA has recognized this problem and begun to steer communities towards more in-town school construction.

In a recent guest post on Kaid Benfield's blog, Lee Epstein questions  whether schools built in sprawling locations can be "green" and explains how an EPA program is bringing about reform.

Can a school located in sprawl "become the true center of a community, where kids stay or go to after-school programs, where “English as a Second Language” classes are held two or three days per week, where the gym, assembly room, cafeteria, or library is available for community meetings, fairs, and even church on Sunday, and where athletic events are easy for hard-working parents to attend?  Is it possible that developers in the region will view the new school’s location as a foot in the door, a necessary precursor for new residential development, even farther out, and that the community will eventually go along?  This, unfortunately, is just another “sprawl school,” not a “green” one.  (Of course, the situation in entirely rural communities with very small central towns may be different.)

"Fortunately, reform is happening.  Encouragingly, EPA has fully recognized the direct and indirect environmental consequences of poor school siting decisions, and has recommended that school systems recognize such issues as well.  In a recently published set of (voluntary) school siting guidelines, the agency encourages school systems to undertake an environmental review of any new facilities they wish to construct, and to consider the location of such schools as an important component in the evaluation."

Epstein reports on progress in school construction standards, published by the Council of Education Facility Planners International, that no longer state unequivocally that a new high school “needs” 30-40 acres and a middle school 10-20 acres. Schools can double up on athletic and practice fields, use in-town community parks, or just locate only their playing fields where enough space may be found for them, Epstein writes. "Often the best outcome for all is the renovation of existing facilities, or the reconstruction of a new school in the midst of a communit," he says.

For more in-depth coverage on this topic:

• Subscribe to New Urban News to read all of the articles (print+online) on implementation of greener, stronger, cities and towns.

• See the October-November 2011 issue of New Urban News. Topics: HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods; Parking reform, transit-oriented parking policy, Obama vs. Congress, West Virginia town revitalizes, suburb remakes its center, ecological dividend, cul-de-sac makeover, thoroughfare manual, and much more.

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• Get SmartCode Version 9 and Manual, the code book that is having the most impact on zoning reform nationwide, with expert commentary by Andres Duany.

• See the September 2011 issue of New Urban News. Topics: Walk Score, sprawl retrofit, livability grants, Katrina Cottages, how to get a transit village built, parking garages, the shrinking Wal-Mart, Complete Streets legislation, an urban capital fund, and much more.