This book draws on important original transdisciplinary research to address a wide range of issues relating to the remodeling of existing schools for pre-teenagers to fit them to various novel teaching models (e.g. collaborative learning, ICT integration, and out-of-classroom working) and to create effective educational environments for the future. The strong relationship between people’s wellbeing, physical environment and student learning in schools has already been extensively studied in international research. At the same time, a number of different scenarios of possible innovations are now emerging, and these require conscious choices in terms of designing both the ways and the places where educational processes can be developed. The principal focus of this research was the relationship between infrastructure, activities, and school communities. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which discusses conceptual aspects and outlines innovative renewal strategies. The second section describes a participatory research process developed in five case studies of lower-secondary or middle schools with the aim of updating our knowledge about such schools and identifying emerging issues. The last section presents case studies, operational tools, and design strategies that aid decision-making and support interventions to renew school facilities. The book is intended mainly for scholars of architecture and education, but is also of interest to a wider readership, including principals, teachers, designers, decision-makers in school communities, and heads of municipal education departments.

The increase in the population of the United States and the rapid movement of people from rural to urban areas continue to create many problems in the great cities. Overcrowding of residential areas, congestion of streets and highways, increased demands for city services, and the changing social patterns of cities contribute to these problems. To solve them, immediate and long-range goals must be cooperatively established and striven for. Even though many of the legally constituted agencies such as the school systems, boards of health, highway departments, city planning commissions, and others are quite independent of one another, there is an essence of interdependence necessary to successful planning. Each agency would be in a better position to fulfill its own functions· and objectives if it had an awareness of the problems of the other agencies. This study, an attempt to identify characteristic problems in planning school facilities in metropolitan central cities, is one effort to acquaint the various planning groups with at least one phase of this very important and overall community interest.

COVID-19 has stressed the condition of radical uncertainty that increasingly characterises our times and compels cities to learn new ways to cope with unexpected global urban challenges. The volume proposes preparedness as a key concept in urban geography, planning, and policy, inviting international scholars to discuss its pros and cons. Firstly, it builds a critical theoretical framework around the concept of preparedness in relation to the COVID-19 effects and other interconnected crises. Then, the authors put at work and redefine preparedness, starting from worldwide surveys, research experiences, public discourses and spatial strategies analysis in Europe and, more extensively, in Italy. Finally, the closing section goes beyond the view of preparedness as an emergency tool, proposing to interpret it more broadly as a technology supporting a sustainable urban transition. The book mainly targets academics in urban planning, policy, and geography. However, the prominence of the topic of preparedness makes the volume an essential reading not only within social sciences but further in engineering, basic sciences, and life science. In addition, the book provides directions to practitioners and civic leaders in supporting cities and regions to prepare themselves in the face of pandemics and unpredictable socio-environmental shocks.

The primary purpose of this study is to learn from the experiences of schools across the U.S. that are engaged in a largely process-oriented reform strategy. Schools vary in their capacity for productive self-reflection. The authors examine the process of self-assessment that many schools engaged in during this time of widespread public attention to the equlaity of schools. The schools examined in these cases reveal a complex interaction between the nature of the self-reflective activity the schools were engaged in (in this case, a National Education Association school review process entitled KEYS to Success in Schools), the contexts that shape the school, and the readiness on the part of school staff to engage in systematic reflection around issues that affect teaching and learning. The act of self-reflection in schools may not provide, by itself, a source of new ideas, alternative models, and a sense of what might be possible for the school to accomplish. Some external agent can often provide the impetus for (or constrain) the actions of school staffs in examining their programs and capacity for renewal. The acts and outcomes of self-reflection are inevitably guided and/or constrained by various contexts (including the school's history, culture, structure, and supports and pressures provided from communities, districts, and states).