A recent article in Planning, the magazine of the American Planning Association, talks about how local communities are responding to rapid population growth. In Florida (where I lived for several months), school enrollment increases by nearly 50,000 students each year. To keep up with demand, districts increasingly built large schools on vacant plots of land at the edge of neighborhoods, rather than integrating schools into neighborhoods--56 new schools were built in Florida in 2000 alone.

A 2002 law required closer coordination between school districts and county planners. The results have so far been limited; coordination is evidenced by a single document signed by each party that a school site is acceptable. However, increasing constraints on public investments may force more coordinaion, as in the case of shared school site and rec center facilities (sharing fields and a gym, for example).

It will be interesting to watch whether increasing requirements for collaboration will result in actual collaborative advantage; in other words, districts and planners finding ways to accomplish their goals more efficiently and with better results than if they were working independently.