Schools are too important to the life of a community to be relegated to leftover parcels of land donated by a developer or the cheapest land available, Steiner says. Established school sites, too, offer opportunities for planning. “We are building schools all the time even as we are closing other schools,” Steiner says. “Neighborhoods will go through periods where there’s a very low census of children around a school, but that doesn’t mean children won’t be there in the future.” Instead of closing schools in an enrollment slump, Steiner says districts could follow a model in New York City, where such schools are repurposed as community or senior centers, until the surrounding neighborhood cycles back into one with children. “Once we close a school, we actually can leave a big hole in the community,” Steiner says. “And we have to be mindful that we are not just making an investment for 40 years, we may be making an investment for 100 years. Stable neighborhoods will go through cycles.
30 Spring 2014
“What if you stay with a school? You might actually be able to make the neighborhood come back faster,” Steiner says. “Communities can decide to value public resources, and schools are one of those resources.” Active transportation plays a big role in New Urbanism, a land planning and design movement that started in the late 1980s to promote walkable neighborhoods, with jobs, shopping, restaurants and public facilities such as schools all within walking distance of homes. In contrast, in many communities today, Steiner says, the rules are biased in favor of an automobile-centric, suburban style of development. “Unless we change the conversation, the incentives or the regulations we are going to continue to design in this same way, and we’re going to get the same results we’ve always had,” Steiner says. “Think how often you see a sidewalk or a bike lane and then it stops. We would never do that to automobile drivers but we do it to bicyclists and pedestrians all the time.
“I’ve come to believe that there is a certain part of public policy that assumes that sprawl is a foregone conclusion.” Some studies indicate that creating an environment conducive to walking also creates opportunities for people to get to know their neighbors. Just because more people are walking doesn’t necessarily lead to more community, Steiner says, but it does lead to better health. “People will walk anywhere they have to, but in places where it is easier to walk, you’re more likely to see people walking,” Steiner says. There are equity issues, too. Often, the poor walk because they have to, the wealthy because they choose to. Still, walking, whether to reach a destination or for recreation, is part of a health habit, Steiner says, and one that could be grounded in simply walking to school. “If we look at the full cost of school transportation, we aren’t accounting for the lifelong habits that would be developed if we found a way to design our schools and integrate them more