The Changing Context for Planning Education in the UK and the Prospects for Research-Led, Practice-Engaged Teaching

The UK’s Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) celebrates its centenary in 2014, marking 100 years of close relationships between university-based Planning Schools and a professional body focussed on planning practice. During this period, the context for university education and the very idea of planning has changed dramatically contributing to a continual renegotiation of the relationships between the planning profession and the educational institutions it accredits. These changes have been particularly acute in the last ten years where a number of factors have forced a rapid change in the nature of planning education in the UK. This has included a boom and then slump in the number of planning students linked to the national economic situation, a reorganisation of many planning schools and their merger with cognate disciplines such as geography and an increased focus of research output, rather than professional engagement the key institutional indicator of success. This last factor adds a particularly new dimension to the profession-university relationship, which could potentially lead to either a straining of tensions or a synergy through research-led teaching that could significantly benefit both.

This paper will briefly review the evolution of UK planning schools and the co-evolution of the main ideas informing planning education. It will then describe the current profile of UK planning schools, based on an extensive national survey conducted on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute. The paper will then critically review the main challenges and opportunities facing UK Planning Schools in the context of changes in both planning practice and higher education. It will then move on to the concept of research-led teaching, drawing on current practice in the UK and review how well this concept serves students and the idea of developing reflective planning practitioners. Finally, the paper will seek to draw broad lessons from the experience of the UK and reflect on the type of planning education that can best serve planning professions in a variety of international contexts in the future.

The Changing Context for Planning Education in the UK and the Prospects for Research-Led, Practice-Engaged Teaching

The UK’s Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has celebrated its centenary in 2014, marking 100 years of close relationships between university-based planning schools and a professional body focused on planning practice. During this period, the context for university education and the very idea of planning have changed dramatically contributing to a continual renegotiation of the relationships between the planning profession and the educational institutions it accredits. These changes have been particularly pronounced in the last 10 years where a number of factors have forced a rapid change in the nature of planjavascript:void(0);ning education in the UK. This has included a boom and then slump in the number of planning students linked to the dynamics of national economic situation, a reorganization of many planning school curricula, and their merger with cognate disciplines such as geography and an increased focus on research output, rather than professional engagement as the key indicator of institutional success. This last factor adds a particularly new dimension to the profession-university relationship, which could potentially lead to either straining of tensions or a synergy through research-led teaching that could significantly benefit both. This chapter will briefly review the evolution of UK planning schools and of the main ideas informing planning education. It will then describe the current profile of UK planning schools, based on an extensive national survey conducted on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute. The paper will then critically review the main challenges and opportunities facing UK planning schools in the context of changes in both planning practice and higher education. It will then move on to the concept of research-led teaching, drawing on current practice in the UK and review how well this concept serves students and the idea of developing reflective planning practitioners. Finally, the paper will seek to draw broad lessons from the experience of the UK and reflect on the type of planning education that can best serve planning professions in a variety of international contexts in the future.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst our students.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on a Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst students.

Making sustainability ‘real’: using group-enquiry to promote education

Sustainable development is now widely held as a transcendental ideal of town and country planning, yet the way in which it is taught in planning schools remains problematic. This arises from a range of factors, including the all-persuasive nature of sustainability and the lack of solid examples of success through implementation. The issue of how best to promote learning for sustainable development in planning has arguably intensified in the last two years in the case of the Royal Town Planning Institute- sponsored ‘fast track’ one-year Masters, which has reduced the opportunities for students to engage in wider (and perhaps even deeper) concepts, including that of sustainable development. This paper explores this through discussion of a specific project developed at Queen’s University Belfast, facilitated by a grant from the UK Higher Education Academy. Working with a local community, this entailed a group of students working on their Masters thesis collectively addressing issues of sustainable regeneration in a small Irish market town. The design of the project draws heavily on the concepts of enquiry based learning, experiential learning and action competence, whichare seen as being central to improving education for sustainable development (ESD). The paper explores the benefits of such an approach and discusses the ways in which this experience can help enhance student’s experience of ESD.