The Role of Schools in Creating Vibrant Communities

An excerpt from the new book Creating Vibrant Communities, written by architect and urban planner Dean Landy.

While residential development increases unabated across Australia to meet housing demand – from the growth areas on our city fringes to major areas of inner suburban regeneration – peoples’ desire to be connected to a vibrant and liveable place hasn’t diminished. In fact, we are seeing the contrary – people are now predominately selecting where they live based on a different set of criteria than what our parents’ generation would have considered. Now, more than ever, it’s about lifestyle.

The reality is, however, factors such as affordability, access to employment, transport and education often dictate where we end up settling. For many, this means relocating to the growth areas emerging across Australia – areas that, based on the track record of developments of recent decades, don’t meet the lifestyle choices many aspire to.

If we desire to see solutions that better address the continuing social, economic and environmental pressures, the challenge is to develop a more holistic urban development model that creates shared value for developers, governments and communities alike. What we need is a more entrepreneurial approach to community development.

The ambition of my book Creating Vibrant Communities is to go beyond the rhetoric, to provide practical solutions for delivering communities that live up to the challenge of being healthy and vibrant and hence more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable.

Schools are a particularly important piece of the urban development puzzle and have the potential to play a critical role in the development of growth area communities. Where infrastructure is still under development, school campuses can become a real heart of a new community, providing a landmark and asense of civic presence. They also provide the facilities for a range of learning experiences to occur such as classrooms, sports ovals and performing arts facilities. However, educational institutions have potential well beyond their bricks and mortar.

Growth areas can face specific challenges when it comes to achieving social cohesion as they have no legacy of established social networks, and these areas often attract a range of cultures and ethnicities that do not have a history of cohabitation. Therefore, there is no better place than the local school to seed community integration and anchor the social connectivity within a new urban development, as well as providing a range of learning opportunities for local people.

Despite the broad community benefits of focusing on lifelong education, the traditional approach to the location and form of suburban education infrastructure often pushes learning to the outer both physically and symbolically. That is, school buildings are often located among seas of housing, far from public transport nodes, retail and other forms of local commerce. From a student’s perspective, this creates a profound sense of separation from what is going on in the real world. From the community’s perspective, these facilities, which are often gated, communicate that they are only for enrolled pupils. They may be paid for in full or in large part by our taxes, yet they largely sit idle outside of 9am–3pm, Monday to Friday.

I believe there is an opportunity to reassess the potential of school infrastructure, in particular, to bring about a range of community benefits in areas such as social cohesion, capacity-building and economic viability by making education infrastructure an integral and integrated part of new communities and their town centres.

From a developer’s perspective, utilising education infrastructure to seed social cohesion can be an extremely effective way of rapidly building an authentic community feel that supports the sale of future stages of a development, as well as equipping the community to grow strong and sustainable into the future. We encourage developers to think more strategically about schools and other opportunities for community education, as further opportunities to secure the success of a development, rather than blank land parcels that will be ‘sorted out by someone else later’.

Starting a conversation between councils, education providers, local industry and developers about school infrastructure prior to the masterplan of a new urban development being finalised is the ideal scenario. This allows potential synergies between the community, local industry, schools and tertiary education providers and other partners to be explored.

When these stakeholders collaborate there is the opportunity to create a variety of learning pathways, leading to meaningful career pathways and capacity-building within the local community.

For example, the Officer Education Precinct is located in a developing area in the south east of Melbourne’s metropolitan area. It plays an important role in the overall structure plan of the area, contributing to the creation of a cohesive neighbourhood. The precinct incorporates the Officer Secondary School, the Officer Specialist School, a Community Education Hub and a soon to be completed Gum Scrub Creek Primary School. ClarkeHopkinsClarke were responsible for masterplanning and design of the entire precinct. The Officer town centre is located to the north of the site whilst a large reserve incorporating sports facilities is located to the south.

The development of an Education Precinct has created ample opportunity to recognise efficiencies and to create facilities that can be used by the entire community. The site of the precinct was originally set aside for a secondary school only. Due to the tireless lobbying efforts of some local people, the state government agreed to provide a Specialist School for the area and it was decided that it would also be incorporated into the secondary school site. The precinct masterplan was therefore required to fit two schools on an eight-hectare site, an area typically required to house a secondary school only, requiring more of a ‘vertical school’ solution.

Continuing the main pedestrian axis to the north into the education precinct site reinforces great connectivity with the town centre. The built form is pushed to the edges of the site giving the precinct great civic presence within the neighbourhood. This provides space for a range of shared areas throughout the centre and western border of the site including an oval, sports field, various sports courts, a central plaza and an outdoor auditorium that can be utilised as a performance space. However, it is the centrally located Community Education Hub that really brings the two schools and the community together.

The Education Hub was added to the scope of the project during the masterplanning phase via collaboration with the local council, who attracted a further community infrastructure grant to fund the facilities. The Hub buildings incorporate reception, food technology, games hall, performing arts and multipurpose spaces that can be utilised by either school or by the local community.

The Officer Education Hub is a great example of how land can be used efficiently to create a range of facilities that provide opportunities for community involvement and lifelong learning.

Creating Vibrant Communities is available to purchase online from the official website. The book will be available in select bookstores nationally in 2017 at a RRP of $59.95.