On this page

• Background
• EPA Resources
• Other Resources

Background
 

Where and how schools are built profoundly affect the communities they serve. Over the next few decades, thousands of schools around the country will be built and renovated. While a first-rate education in a safe facility must always be the primary consideration when making school spending decisions, a growing number of communities are using these investments to meet multiple goals — educational, health, environmental, economic, social, and fiscal.

Investments in schools both respond to and influence growth. Many communities that are reevaluating their growth patterns are also assessing how and where they spend their education dollars. The boom in school construction offers an opportunity to improve the quality of schools and communities together, by applying the principles of smart growth to educational facility planning.

Smart growth strategies include:

• Conserving resources and land.
• Offering choices in housing, transportation, shopping, recreation, and jobs.
• Encouraging community collaboration.
• Fostering distinctive, attractive neighborhoods.

A school's location affects student safety, community health, and the environment. A school that is safe and easy for students, teachers, parents, and other community members to reach on foot or by bicycle helps reduce air pollution from automobile use, protecting community health. Building schools compactly and in the neighborhoods they serve minimizes the amount of paved surface they create, which can help protect water quality by reducing polluted runoff.

Top of Page

EPA Resources

Publications

The Smart School Siting Tool (2016): Can help communities align school site selection with planning policies and capital investments, understand how school siting and other community planning processes are coordinated, and compare school siting alternatives. 

Youth Travel to School: Community Design Relationships with Mode Choice, Vehicle Emissions, and Healthy Body Weight (2008): Examined if and how a variety of factors, including parental perception of neighborhood safety and neighborhood design, influence school travel. The study also examined air pollutants and CO₂ emissions generated from school trips.

Schools for Successful Communities: An Element of Smart Growth (2004): Explains why and how communities can use smart growth planning principles to build schools that better serve and support students, staff, parents, and the entire community. This publication helps communities invest in schools that will give children the best possible education, use taxpayer dollars wisely, and improve the quality of life for all residents.