Smart growth and school reform - What if we talked about race and took community seriously?

Many researchers and practitioners of Smart Growth regard suburban sprawl in ways that limit their understanding of it and their ability to influence it. They look at fragments of the "sprawl system" in isolation from one another-for example, focusing on land use to the neglect of social interaction, and focusing on the suburbs with little connection to the central city. They see sprawl and its remedies largely as the products of individual, rather than institutional, decisions. And they constrain government mainly to providing incentives for or regulating private initiatives, rather than intervening actively. In the process, many Smart Growth proponents neglect race, treat community superficially, and say little about schooling as a cause or remedy for sprawl. This article looks at how race, community, and schooling have contributed to sprawl and examines education as a quintessential challenge in managing the sprawl system.