Illinois is one of six states working with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop policy on sustainable school siting. What’s that? Well, basically, for years we have been building new schools out in cornfields and letting old ones closer to where people live go to waste, or worse. This is being done through the Lt. Governor’s office, so participation is free (Ba-Dum-Dum!) and you can either attend a big symposium on the topic in Joliet on February 27 or just submit comments to http://www.standingupforillinois.org/green/school_siting.php.

The issue is sustainability, but it is also preservation. I recently looked at an old Sanborn map of Oak Park – from the 1920s and 30s. It was amazing how much was exactly the same. Over 90% of Oak Park’s single-family homes date from before 1939 and that was evident from the map – you could still use it to identify most of the residential buildings. The exceptions were a few (surprisingly few) commercial areas and some of the 1960s apartment highrises along the railroad tracks. And the schools. This was the one resource COMPLETELY altered in the last 70 years – schools.

And no wonder. Schools are the only ones that don’t have to play by the rules. They can basically ignore local planning and zoning laws. Schools are basically foreign embassies (except I can think of several embassies that preserve and rehabilitate historic buildings) thanks to certain state laws. They have a free hand denied every other building owner. And they play that hand.

When the new middle schools were built in Oak Park a decade ago, the state facilities officials treated the local community like peasants and blithely informed them that they didn’t have to listen to anything the community said. They magnanimously said they would listen anyway but then claimed all the suggestions were too late to have any effect on the process.

In the morning I walk my daughter to a design-free school building where she huddles with the other sixth graders in a foreshortened patio a car-width away from a busy street. This used to be a generous 100-foot-plus setback when my wife went to the same school which meant both FUNCTION and DESIGN were better. The absence of architectural design in the new middle schools is unfortunate in a community whose architectural character inspires ongoing human and financial investment as well as tourism.

here is what it used to look like

I hope this initiative can lead to more sustainable planning. Jim Mann used to tell a story when he ran the National Trust’s Midwest Office office a few years back about the governor (Maryland maybe??) who realized that in the next decade he was going to build 100 new schools and tear down 100 old schools. He saw the insanity of the planning process and the incredible amount of waste of taxpayer money that meant. Now we in Illinois have a chance to end this cycle of waste.