Education in its Place

Education, mobility and spatial inequalities

Nov 14, 2024

This post delves further into the issues about the contribution of education to urban planning and development which I began to explore in a recent post on here. In that piece I was questioning whether the high expectations for the role of education as a key feature of strategies and policies for economic development and innovation, the delivery of the goals for sustainable development, and for the wellbeing of communities as set out by international organisations such as OECD and UNESCO were reflected in the policies and practice of educational and urban planning in cities and regions.

I noted that whilst urban planning has evolved from an emphasis on physical transformation of areas in cities to a more complex concern with social change to improve opportunities and the quality of life of residents, there is also a view that current new urbanism and placemaking activities do not fully connect with education planning especially with a broader concept of learning in mind. Educational inequalities and socio-spatial disparities are closely intertwined; it might be expected therefore that education would also be a field of action for urban planners at both local and regional levels. If there is to be a realistic likelihood of tackling inequalities in opportunity among residents of different areas in the same cities and in the social and economic performance between towns and cities regionally then there is a need for a shared understanding of the complexities of the relationship between education and place. Such an understanding has to include both the strengths and the limitations that relationship brings to policies for urban development and, to use a well-worn phrase, to ‘levelling-up’.

Competing narratives

There is a risk of a disconnect arising from alternative narratives about the basis for policy intervention to address the inter-connections between the educational and socio-economic spatial landscapes in cities and regions.

One narrative which is strongly associated with educationalists rests on the assumption that knowledge and skills acquisition and opportunities for lifelong learning in themselves offer a path to individual opportunity and social participation, to social cohesion and integration in communities, and to innovation and economic competitiveness at city level.

Urban and regional planning on the other hand increasingly ties questions of sustainable urban development in the context of rapid changes in economic activity to the creation of the conditions locally and regionally which will attract investment and innovation to the economic base of cities to enable them to be competitive in regional (and national) economies. Education and skills are seen as one important locational factor in this endeavor, along with other factors such as agglomeration, transportation and housing mix. In relation to deprived neighbourhoods, within this narrative, education is discussed in terms of the accessibility of schools and training opportunities and suitable infrastructure to facilitate knowledge and skills acquisition as a means of countering sociospatial disparities. This second narrative therefore concentrates on locational and design issues for impact in neighbourhoods and in the broader context of local area development.

There are strong research streams underlying each of these narratives. In relation to the first research has consistently highlighted the benefits of learning for individuals and communities. Much of this is captured within the learning cities movement about which I have written before.

The second research stream is focused on understanding the basis of urban inequalities and so-called neighbourhood effects. It typically explores how features within neighbourhoods such as housing, access to employment and social facilities contributes to stark differences in the lived experience and life chances of residents, and especially young people growing up in different parts of the same cities. With respect to education, one of the prominent neighbourhood effects relates to wide differences in attainment from one neighbourhood to the next. Underlying this strand of research is the belief that understanding these effects better will contribute to more relevant solutions to overcoming disadvantage and to the improvement of education.

These policy narratives and the research strands associated with them are both concerned with the delivery of education within areas in towns and cities, but they are driven by different professional traditions. They do not always seem to intersect in local government structures or for that matter in research agencies. University departments of Urban Studies are usually separate from Departments of Education. At the risk of oversimplifying, educationalists tend to be concerned with issues of pedagogy (what is taught and how) whilst planners are concerned with the distribution, design and access to educational provision. It seems likely that these different professional perspectives and priorities make for difficulties in reaching common strategies and risk a disconnect in policy responses to unwinding the complexities of the relationship between education and place.

Inter-professional tensions are likely to be compounded by the structures in which each works. Departments of Education in Local Authorities and in central government are usually separate from Departments of Planning and economic development. Even in some more progressive authorities which have Directors of Place with a broad remit for development issues, education is not always within that remit. Funding streams too tend to be separate which can distort the delivery of more holistic programmes.

Intra and Inter-city inequalities

These kinds of factors may help explain tensions in the response to what might be called intra-city educational and socio-economic landscapes. Whilst city authorities will make efforts to distribute schools across their areas to ensure school facilities are sufficiently close to centres of population, location and accessibility of educational facilities can remain as factors influencing educational inequalities between neighbourhoods, particularly if the quality of the service offered in the schools is taken into account. Inequalities may arise in the quality of school buildings, in the caliber of the staff they are able to attract, and the social composition of the catchment areas they serve. An increasing focus on the neighbourhood as a benchmark for urban planning and placemaking and a greater emphasis on the importance of social space and green space also have implications for the opportunities and scope for education practice.

They may also compound the neighbourhood effects referred to earlier. Indeed it has been argued that the key to neighbourhood regeneration lies in attempting to encourage a more spatially integrated society. Today’s focus on community-led regeneration might be a hindrance to the achievement of this objective. A common perspective is that localities with concentrated disadvantage are characterized by lack of social integration and high levels of social exclusion.

On the other hand it has also been suggested that, given the right conditions, areas of disadvantage can become ‘transit’ or ‘escalator’ areas. These conditions are likely to include not only provision of accessible learning opportunities but also access to affordable housing and efficient urban transportation to access community assets enjoyed by those in less disadvantaged neighbourhoods and encouraging mobility to more socially-mixed neighbourhoods.

The discussion of the relationship of education and place needs to be extended to a wider inter-city focus. The unravelling of local neighbourhood effects needs also to be seen in the context of area effects between towns and cities with poorer economic performance and those with more prosperous economies. In this regard I was recently drawn to a piece by Sam Dimitriu in his Substack ‘Notes on Growth’.

Dimitriu points out that skills are mobile: skilled workers are free to move. People with higher levels of education and training will tend to go where the demand for those skills is, and where those skills might attract a higher premium. As Dimitriu puts it

‘If you want to ‘level up’ a struggling town, investing in training and education is unlikely to pay off unless there’s an unmet demand for skilled workers. This isn’t to say training is a bad investment per se. More training may pay off for the individual, but if they take their skills elsewhere then you will do nothing to fix regional disparities.’

Attempts to ‘level up’ by focusing only on training local workers are therefore unlikely to succeed. Planning policies should be thinking much more about ways to spread the demand for those skills and build the conditions for those skills to be deployed productively. Attempts to reduce inequalities between cities and regions should concentrate therefore on boosting the demand for skilled workers either by incentivizing new businesses to set up or by building better and reliable transport links to allow more people living outside larger and more prosperous centres to gain from the benefits agglomeration can bring. Those with higher skills who continue to live in areas where there is little demand for their skills will find themselves over-skilled for the jobs which are available, to the likely frustration of the individual and the less than efficient return from educational investment and supply.

Education as infrastructure

Making cities attractive for investment by business depends on the availability of a broad range of economic and social infrastructure including a suitable range of accessible housing provision, an attractive environment, efficient transport links for the mobility of people and goods, and facilities for supporting research and innovation such as science centres and access to university expertise. Regarding education provision as infrastructure and part of the infrastructure mix seems vital to provide the skills-base employers need and to use the skills supply which is available in the most productive way.

This approach poses a considerable challenge to both education planning and urban planning. For education there is the need for continuous improvement in the quality and relevance of education in the face of rapid economic change. At the neighbourhood level there is the need to provide a more equitable spatial distribution of educational opportunity and a better match to skills demand and community wellbeing. Urban planning has a huge task to secure not only appropriate built infrastructure – houses, transport, open space and cultural facilities - but also to produce attractive liveable communities.

Accessible educational provision is part of the mix. Education can be a source of both social mobility and locational mobility. As such education supply is one part of what is required for overcoming wider social, spatial and economic disparities. We need other social and economic infrastructure too if we are to build effective pathways to inclusive and sustainable cities and neighbourhoods. Mobility will not happen on its own: we need to know more about the push and pull effects of neighbourhood differences in the lived experience of residents of different city areas.

Policies for Places

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