Expanding the ‘language’ of planning: A meditation on planning education for the twenty‐first century

Abstract

What kinds of knowledge do planners need in a post‐modern age in which cities and regions are characterized by fragmentation, polarization, and ‘difference’ in its many guises? This paper identifies four dilemmas of traditional planning education: the reduction of ‘knowledge’ to a set of measurable skills; the ossifying of programmes around a core which reinforces an outdated modernist paradigm; the loss of focus on questions of meaning, of value, of the spirit, which has resulted from a divorce between planning and design education; and the tendency to draw tight boundaries around professional identity, which prevents a truly interdisciplinary practice from emerging. Preparing planners for the challenges of the twenty‐first century might involve the following: identifying the specificity of the domain of planning in a more dynamic way so that the core does not become redundant every decade; articulating planning programmes with environmental and design programmes; shifting from an emphasis on skills to key literacies (five are identified); approaching planning as an ethical inquiry.

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