Starting with Schools: Proximity as a Space of Governance in Both Urban Planning and Educational Policies

In the history of urban planning, the relationship between schools and cities has two dimensions. The first concerns ensuring the right proportion of planned new inhabitants and new schools. The second concerns providing all public facilities on the neighborhood scale and foreseeing the relations between schools and other services, according to a proximity metric. In the last few decades, the conditions of proximity are weakened and require rethinking, particularly in the context of new proportions in the relationship between the size of the neighborhood, the number of school-age residents, and school buildings. A new balance in the organization of access to schools to reduce processes of segregation and new responses to the new needs expressed by new profiles of inhabitants in terms of access to public spaces and facilities should similarly be considered. This essay proposes to rethink the proximity metrics by paying attention to schools and the possible coordinated action in urban space by urban planning and educational policies, starting with schools’ role in re-establishing equitable access to school services.