Flip Chart Notes for Group No. 1

from

Sessions 1, 2 and 3

SESSION ONE:

Knowledges, skills and understanding needed to deal with challenges and implications of worldwide and Canadian trends in planning:

Global/local dialectic

• changes and trends are articulated locally and planners work involves mediating between the tensions and impacts of global and local change

Technological change

• positive impacts
  • potential for collaborative planning
  • increased global communication and mobility
• negative impacts
  • weakening human interaction and relationships
  • decline in quality of communication
• planners need technological skills (GIS, Internet) in order to harness positive implications

Migration

• has positive not just negative impacts
• multi-ethnic communities create vitality, encourage creativity and provide opportunities for cross cultural understanding by engaging with groups in our own communities

Place making

• the social and environmental quality of life is gaining importance as a result of global trends like social dislocation and environmental degradation
• is a planning alternative to bunkerism that seems to be increasing as a result of security concerns
• there are good economic rationales for place making (place making sells)

Active and experiential learning

• provides students with opportunities to experience changes
• travel, field trips, internet, overseas/national exchanges, collaboration with ngo'
• planning students must have the ability to synthesize knowledge and experiences

Adaptability

• ability to respond to change and not fear it
• ability to provide short-term and long-term responses to change

PLENARY DISCUSSION ­ SESSION ONE

We need to implement a culture of interdisciplinarity within schools

• physical proximity is helpful but not sufficient

Planning needs to have more post ­professional degrees

Institutions/Universities should specialize

We need to see the degree as a foundation for life-long learning

We need to draw on local practice

SESSION TWO:

Question 1. Can any one planning program teach all these roles?

NO, institutions should specialize

Question 3. Knowledges and process skills imp. to emerging planning roles

Courage - to think, critique, ask 'dumb' or obvious questions, and act ethically

Listening

Collaboration

Ability to identify and understand contexts within which decisions are made

Ability to create shared meaning or "overstanding"

Learning to learn

Ladder life long learning- kindergarten to grave

Ethical commitment is what makes planning unique

Programs need to be diverse in order to teach all these skills

SESSION THREE:

Planning skills and how they should be taught:

Should planners / planning education be generalist or specialist?

Universities should specialize to some degree

There should be some ability to specialize with each masters program ­ but we are / should be moving to less constraints within specializations

Planning is unique because of its generalist nature

Many planning professionals have been serial specialists throughout their careers

Students come to SCARP to learn application not specialization (planning is concerned with action)

Involvement of practitioners in planning education (through teaching or professional development):

Universities need to use professionals to teach professional skills like communication and presentation

Universities need to make space for professors who don't have PhD's but have vast knowledge and experience

Programs should have options for short/long thesis (thesis / project), evening and weekend courses

Should be an ethical commitment throughout the profession to teach/ mentor new planners