Abstract:
About fifteen years ago the American planning historian Domenic Vitiello remarked on the dearth of literature examining links between education planning, and urban and community planning. That observation is still largely accurate, despite significant Australian and international investment since that time in developing schools as community hubs. The aspiration to expand school-based facilities and programs for wider community use locates schools at the intersection of separate and sometimes competing jurisdictions, planning systems, policy priorities, operational settings and constructions of ‘community’. This paper begins to map and critically analyse Australian policy environments that support and shape the transformation of schools as community hubs and locates Australian developments internationally. The paper argues that recent years have seen some policy and institutional innovations in Australia that respond to the challenges of multi-level and multi-sectoral governance in this field. The paper concludes by engaging with an emerging literature on post-COVID cities and communities to argue for further innovation in the policy, planning and design of schools as social infrastructure.