BUILDING FOR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY - Kennedy Bibliothek

INTRODUCTION
1. Co-ordination of school and community facilities means different
things to different people. To some, it is economically justifiable to
examine the overlaps between the different social services which the
governments of various countries supply to their urban and rural communities,
and to attempt to co-ordinate them and even physically combine
them. To other people, co-ordination represents an improvement in the
quality of the service itself. Certainly to the consumer, co-ordination
makes life a lot easier.
2. But co-ordination relates to other factors besides economic and administrative
efficiency. It relates to the somewhat deeper social trend
toward decentralization and local self-determination which is being witnessed
in many countries throughout the world. The following paper is
an attempt to address this aspect of co-ordination, and to describe some
of the planning mechanisms, which have evolved in situations where it has
occurred. .The paper should be read in particular relation to two others
published in the present series: "From Individual Projects towards City-
Wide Networks" by Margrit Kennedy in the present volume (page 25) and
"Inter-Sectoral Issues" by Thierry Malan in Building for School and Community
: I. Policies and Strategies, page 11.
Technology versus Local Cultural Identity
3. One of the by-products of twentieth century technology is universal
culture. Machines, electric power, telecommunications and computers
have blurred the historic contrasts between national cultures, as they
have between cities and rural areas, and between neighborhoods within
cities themselves. ' Traditional skills have been undermined by mass consumer
production. Few families in the world still make their own clothes,
houses, or tools, or sing the songs of their traditions, or tell folktales
to their children, or even make their own bread.
4. Technology has, of course, enormously increased the range of our
choices. Any modern shopping center, with its air-conditioned mall
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