Opportunity-Rich Schools and Sustainable Communities: Seven Steps to Align High-Quality Education With Innovations in City and Metropolitan Planning and Development

Details challenges and steps for linking quality education and community and economic vitality, including establishing a shared vision and metrics, aligning investments for prosperity, and expanding access via transportation. Lists promising practices

University-community relations and the need for a representational discourse : exploring town-gown at the University of Pennsylvania

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-123).This thesis examines university-community relations, arguing that the current discourse requires rigorous theoretical attention to the use of representation in media and in physical design to adequately gauge and understand this relationship. Modeled after Naomi Carmon's framework of urban redevelopment, the author provides a new framework for understanding eras of university-community partnerships. Then, the author synthesizes a series of theoretical constructs to develop the representational discourse, to be used in a more rigorous analysis of university-community relationships. Drawing on John Gaventa's framework of power, the study closely examines the University of Pennsylvania and analyzes the University's use of imaging, narrative, and other forms of representation since the 1960s as a way to ensure and perpetuate its dominance. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to inform the ever-evolving discourse around neighborhood change in relation to "anchor institutions," and offers recommendations for points of intervention on the part of communities, planning practitioners, university officials, and theoreticians.by Ariel H. Bierbaum.M.C.P

Putting Schools on the Map. Linking Transit-Oriented Development, Households with Children, and Schools

Transit-oriented development (TOD) remains a popular strategy to achieve environmentally sustainable infill development and auto use reduction. Typically, TOD in the United States offers retail amenities and housing catering to single individuals, childless couples, and empty nesters. Municipal and regional leaders increasingly hold a vision for managing expected growth that aims to increase equity, support households with children, and create mixed-income communities and that includes TOD as a core strategy. These explicitly equity-focused and family-oriented goals call for a different TOD model than has typically been developed. This new model requires an examination of the ways that TOD might attract households with children concerned with access to high-quality schools, even when schools are outside the domain of traditional transportation and land use public agencies. This paper first reviews the TOD and transportation literature and its attention to households with children and issues of public schools for students from kindergarten to Grade 12. Given the information from the literature, a conceptual framework of 10 core connections between TOD, households with children, and schools is hypothesized. Four exploratory case studies from the San Francisco, California, Bay Area offer insights into the opportunities and tensions that practitioners face in planning and implementing TOD that might attract families. A discussion of the 10 core connections in light of the case study evidence follows. The paper concludes with policy and research recommendations

Qualitative Spaces: Integrating Spatial Analysis for a Mixed Methods Approach

Spatial context matters for qualitative social science inquiry. Yet, the explicit and consistent integration of these analyses has largely been segregated to the spatial sciences, geography and urban planning. In this article, we present a theoretical argument for integrating spatial data in qualitative inquiry and strategies for how to triangulate spatial and qualitative data. We argue that including spatial analyses in inquiries of social phenomena enhances depth and rigor to qualitative work across the social sciences

Trajectories of Opportunity for Young Men and Boys of Color: Built Environment and Placemaking Strategies for Creating Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Communities.

This chapter investigates the ways in which unhealthy environments — and the urban planning and institutional practices that created them — structure disadvantage and undermine the life chances of young men and boys of color. We then describe how innovative city-school initiatives are aligning and leveraging the diverse elements of the built and social environment to create the trajectories of opportunity this group needs and deserves

Growth & Opportunity: Aligning High-Quality Public Education & Sustainable Communities Planning in the Bay Area

CC&S and ABAG partnered support and inform local and regional innovation connecting schools to the Bay Area’s regional development and conservation strategy (FOCUS) and the Sustainable Communities Strategy as mandated by California’s climate change legislation, Senate Bill 375. Our new report identifies tangible policy levers at both the regional and municipal levels that realize the co-benefits of pursuing complete communities and high-quality education in tandem. We describe the regional educational landscape and develop recommendations about specific strategies to achieve cross-sector “win-wins.”* What are the educational impacts of non-school policies, such as housing, transportation, and other regional planning investments?* What are the impacts of educational efforts on non-school issues, such as housing choice, sustainable transportation utilization, and community-building opportunities?* How can the region’s policy and practice interventions and investments in housing and transportation be made to strategically support improving school quality

Opportunity-Rich Schools and Sustainable Communities: Seven Steps to Align High-Quality Education with Innovations in City and Metropolitan Planning and Development

Policies and strategies at all levels of government are increasingly associating educational outcomes with community planning and housing. Challenges remain for local officials and practitioners trying to align these policy areas, including persistent spatial inequity and rigid institutional silos. This report develops seven steps to link education and planning policy at the local level. The authors draw from a national scan of model activities, interviews with key experts and agency staff members, and the authors' experience working with local governing bodies. The report identifies practical solutions that encompass assessing the current educational environment, engaging the community, strategic planning and implementation of investment, and institutionalizing successful innovations