The Routledge Handbook of International Planning Education

Nancey Green Leigh, Steven P French, Subhrajit Guhathakurta, Bruce Stiftel, Nancey Green Leigh, Steven P French, Subhrajit Guhathakurta, Bruce Stiftel

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317338987
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Arquitectura
• Categoria: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

The Routledge Handbook of International Planning Education is the first comprehensive handbook with a unique focus on planning education. Comparing approaches to the delivery of planning education by three major planning education accreditation bodies in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and reflecting concerns from other national planning systems, this handbook will help to meet the strong interest and need for understanding how planning education is developed and delivered in different international contexts.

The handbook is divided into five major sections, including coverage of general planning knowledge, planning skills, traditional and emerging planning specializations, and pedagogy. An international cohort of contributors covers each subject's role in educating planners, its theory and methods, key literature contributions, and course design.

Higher education's response to globalization has included growth in planning educational exchanges across international boundaries; The Routledge Handbook of International Planning Education is an essential resource for planners and planning educators, informing the dialogue on the mobility of planners educated under different national schema.

PART 1

Introduction

1

INTRODUCTION

Nancey Green Leigh and Bruce Stiftel

Higher education’s response to globalization has included growth in planning educational exchanges across international boundaries. This handbook addresses the interest and need for understanding how planning education is developed and delivered in different international contexts. It also informs dialogue on the mobility of planners educated under different national schema.

Contributors to the handbook write about general planning knowledge, planning skills, traditional and emerging planning specializations, and pedagogy. They cover the role of their topics in educating planners, the theory and methods of their subject, key literature contributions, and course design.

This handbook comes at a time when there are growing concerns about retrenchment of the globalization that has characterized the world economy and international society since the end of World War II. This “deglobalization” has the potential to undo and destabilize much of the progress and international cooperation that has improved the lives of so many throughout the world. The corollary is the rise in nationalism whereby, as Duara (2018) observes, “the relationship between national political movements and economic development has taken a more sinister turn, exposing the tension between self and other that lies at the heart of all forms of nationalism.”

Globalization’s impacts, of course, have never all been positive. While a marked increase in trade and communications in the post-WWII era made nations more interdependent and wealthier, there has also been rising social and economic inequality that has contributed to the rise of nationalism. The associated protectionist tendencies, which have intensified recently, are weakening global supply chains that will lower economic growth, limit migration, and increase human suffering. These protectionist tendencies also erode the cooperation and interdependence among nations that is widely acknowledged to be necessary for solving critical global problems such as climate change.

One could argue that a handbook focused on international planning education has diminished relevance in an era of deglobalization. However, we would argue that it is more than relevant: it is greatly needed. Thirty years ago, from his study of planning schools, Niebanck (1988) found “planning as the principal means by which the human community can confidently sustain itself on this planet.” We can see his statement as a heady self-validation, as well as a heavy challenge.

The enterprise we call planning education bears many of the traits of any teaching program—classes meet, homework is prepared, exams are taken—but, it is also unique in breadth of aspirations, spirit of collaboration, and experimental approach. If planners are to usefully address the challenges of rapid urbanization, economic development, disaster preparedness, climate change, social justice, and resource sustainability, they must develop capacities for prediction, analysis, and intervention that defy textbook prescriptions, and most of all, they must be prepared for lifelong learning and renewal. With this, the first Handbook of International Planning Education, the editors and authors have sought to capture the essence of that unique education in ways that can richly inform curricular and pedagogic choices by city and regional planning faculties across the globe.

Today’s planning schools are as diverse as the institutional and cultural communities they serve. Design is the predominant theme in Latin-American, Mediterranean, and East Asian schools; policy the focus in Anglo-American and North European schools. Western country planning favors bottom-up, inclusive planning processes; in the East, top-down, centralized planning is more common. Land use and urban design represent the bulk of city planning in many countries; integrated planning involving infrastructure, housing, jobs, and sanitation is seen as essential in others (Sanyal, 2005; UN-Habitat, 2009, 2016).

The pedagogy flowing from these substantive differences is also diverse. Perhaps the more expected differences distinguish lecture hall from studio, theory debates from methods practice, but cultural norms affect pedagogy as well. Teachers are sometimes seen as authorities who cannot be challenged; at other times the give and take of a mutual learning community is expected. While planning education is often delivered at small scales, resource limitations can dictate mass education formats (Frank & Silver, 2018).

Planning academic staff can be equally diverse. In many institutions, a doctoral degree is the expected entry credential; in others, professional post-graduate degrees predominate; or the teaching staff may have only a first degree. Normal assignments may encompass teaching and research, full-time teaching may be expected, or the institution may fund only a part-time salary, with staff expected to maintain professional practices (UN-Habitat, 2009).

What is increasingly obvious to many observers is that despite this diversity, or perhaps because of it, learning across national boundaries is necessary. It was not long ago that international cross-fertilization among planning schools was severely limited, with North to South transfers dominating, often as alumni of European and North American schools moved into teaching positions in the Global South (Stiftel & Mukhopadhyay, 2007; Stiftel, Watson, & Acselrad, 2007). That unidirectional flow is increasingly omnidirectional and, today, there is growing recognition that many of the best planning ideas originate in countries that did not use to be idea exporters. There is also growing diversity in the international flow of planning students and faculty. In recognition of this fact, this handbook, while largely drawing from English-language scholarship, features authors from multiple countries and features research and case studies from around the world.

Describing a global process for movement of planning ideas across national groupings and networks leading to contingent universals, Healey (2010) observed: “. . . none of this stitching together of disparate networks and structuring dynamics reduces the diverse particularities of the individual contexts in which planning work is done.” Roy (2011) calls for a critical transnationalism forging transnational solidarities, embedded in yet transcending national systems of governance. She references widely-known exemplars of innovative planning practice, such as the Singapore Model of unprecedented economic growth maintained by a well-ordered city. These exemplars from abroad enable what she calls a “crucible of informed debate” among stakeholders in a place. Sanyal (2010) asks us to remember culture has always been open to influence from abroad and today’s planning cultures have characteristics that resulted from external influence: “What is necessary is that we address the challenges of globally-linked problems by identifying the common ground—a global social commons—which would emphasize commonality over differences, and valorize linkages and ‘contamination’ over purity of cultures.”

The Planning Schools Movement that began with formation of the (US) Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning in 1959, and spread to planning school associations in every major world region, has been key to facilitating cross-fertilization among planning educators (Stiftel, 2009; Stiftel & Watson, 2005). Today, while language and national boundaries are still powerful, planning educators read many of the same journals and attend many of the same conferences, at least much more than they used to.

Structure of the Book

To lay out key issues and practices of planning as taught in tertiary education institutions around the world, we commissioned 28 chapters by 42 authors based in ten countries. These chapters are organized into five sections, described below. After beginning with consideration of the accreditation and quality assurance in planning schools, chapters review pedagogy in common core subjects. We then turn to elective subjects and conclude with the role of studios and workshops.

The authors use their experience and research to identify issues and suggest approaches, but readers must localize each subject. National planning systems have to be taken into account. Higher education practices in specific countries have to be reflected. The context of the program in its university and the skills and ideas of the faculty have to be considered.

1. Introduction

Andrea Frank anchors the discussion with a review of the connections between planning education and organized professional planning practice in Chapter 2. She illustrates accreditation systems in place in France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere, as well as changing approaches to competency assessment. Although there are differences among quality assurance systems administered by government or by professional bodies, these systems tend to work effectively when there is an organized planning profession that speaks with a clear voice.

2. Pillars of Planning Education

The third, fourth, and fifth chapters examine common core subjects. In Chapter 3, “Planning History,” Robert Freestone insists that the past should be part of every planning education, but too often, it is not. Few planning programs have a historian on staff and available literature underserves much of the world. Still, well-articulated, successful models are presented for standalone planning history courses as well as modules focused on urbanism, joint development of history and theory, thematic history and city history.

China is a relative newcomer to planning theory, discussed by Kang Cao, Qinshi Li, Xiaolan Li, and Li Zheng in Chapter 4. Procedural planning theory is widely taught in graduate programs in China, but the approaches are highly diverse and both theories and examples are predominantly taken from abroad. The authors advocate for development of a more nationalized literature and pedagogy, but predict these will be a long time in coming.

In Chapter 5, “Planning Law,” Richard Norton stresses that planners need enough knowledge of law to avoid errors in their practice. His review of planning law pedagogy suggests that the subject is best taught as a broad, interdisciplinary, highly-integrated cross-section of traditional and circumscribed academic and professional legal doctrines and practices. This involves foundational knowledge, technical skills, and application.

3. Pedagogy

The next chapters specifically address issues in the delivery of planning teaching. In Chapter 6, “Designing Core Curricula,” Bruce Stiftel and Jessica Doyle suggest that the US-originated model of planning as rational, comprehensive decision making framed required core courses in planning in many countries for many years. The generalist with a specialty concept led to core curricula framing general knowledge, planning skills, and values. That model has evolved and core curricula now more widely reflect national planning systems, with debates about content common in schools and reflective of the background of academic staff and the employer/professional contexts in which schools operate.

Jennifer Minner, Jennifer Evans-Cowley, and Nader Afzalan provide a review of the fast changing and wide-ranging use of technology in planning education in Chapter 7. They reflect on five areas of innovation: expansion of means of delivery, new organization of university-based learning, uses of planning support systems in the classroom, growing diversity of data sources for planning, and proliferation of new technological tools in planning practice. After analyzing these innovations, they suggest collaboration with practice is vital to technological currency, and that technology should be the basis to foster creativity and critical thinking on the part of planning students.

Judith Grant Long examines the role of studios and workshops in Chapter 8. Studios and workshops are defining components of many planning programs, often relied upon to give tangible reality to book-based introductions from other courses. Studios have challenges, not the least of which is pressure for efficiency in higher education, but they remain highly valued and almost universally used. New instructional technologies have expanded the possibilities in studios, including multi-institutional partnerships.

Gender and its position in planning education is the focus of Chapter 9 by Dory Reeves. While there is substantial recognition of the importance of gender in how cities are experienced and in how planning is practiced, consideration of gender in the planning classroom has been quite limited until recently. Reeves reviews treatment of gender in planning classrooms in four Anglophone countries, persuasively showing the power of gender analysis, and suggests links between planning education and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women.

4. P...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover Page
• Praise
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Pillars of Planning Education
• Part 3 Pedagogy
• Part 4 Planning Skills
• Part 5A Traditional Subjects of Specialization
• Part 5B Essential Subjects of Planning Sustainable Places
• Index