Review of Literature on Planning and Planning Education

1995 Student Curriculum Review

Dan Ohlson

Prepared under the direction of Professor Anthony H. J. Dorcey

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.0  Background & Purpose Statement           

         Challenges and the Forces of Change           

         Planning in the 21st Century           

         Purpose Statement           

2.0  The Evolving Role of the Planner           

         Current Roles  

         A Review of the Debate Over Roles           

         Emerging Roles  

3.0  The Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes of Tomorrow's Planners           

         Packaging Planning Knowledge           

         Skills: The Planners Toolbox           

         Attitudes: Putting Values into Practice           

         The Dilemma of Breadth vs. Depth 

         Experiential Learning          

4.0  The SCARP Program in Context           

         Support for the Focus on Sustainability          

         Support for the Concept of Core Courses & Stream Specializations      

Bibliography of Additional Sources Reviewed   

1.0  Background & Purpose Statement

Challenges and the Forces of Change

"There is a crisis in the profession of city and regional planning" (Sawicki 1988). This comment by an outgoing President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) is indicative of comments and feelings that have been prevalent in the planning education literature for decades. At the heart of the debate around such comments are interrelated issues such as:

1. Planning theory:  What is it?, how is it evolving?, is it autonomous?;
2. Identity crisis: Caused by jurisdictional overlap with architecture, urban studies, geography, engineering, landscape architecture, etc. (Sawicki 1988, Orlick 1993); and
3. Planning pluralism and collective identity: "Planners are torn between reaching out further and further into the universe of policy and planning studies ..... or else defining their professional turf rather more narrowly in the expectation of greater professional security" (Friedmann and Kuester 1994).

This perceived internal "crisis" within the planning profession is exacerbated by the profound and rapid social, economic and environmental changes that are occurring from the local to the global scale as we approach the end of the millennium. Much has been written on the potential implications of these changes on the planning profession. From these efforts we can begin to outline a sample of the key challenges facing planners and the fundamental forces of change within the planning profession as follows:

• There is increasing diversity and increasing social needs within our communities, and simultaneously decreasing resources available to planners (Ross 1994).
• Planning must be more sensitive to the diversity of individual and community interests; gender and ethnicity issues have become mainstream as the intensity of conflicts rises (Friedmann and Kuester 1994).
• Economically we have witnessed the formation of a new global economy that serves as the engine of development for the newly industrializing countries, and simultaneously creates unemployment and underemployment challenges closer to home (Castells 1992, Grant 1994).
• Environmentalism has forced the marriage of natural science and public policy to deal with problems such as waste management, energy conservation and pollution prevention (Healey, 1991).
• The 1992 Rio Conference captured attention on the need for increased attention to local governance, community empowerment, gender equity, and environmental considerations in planning (Selman 1993).
• Negotiation and bargaining is now a normal activity within many planning processes (Rabinovitz 1989).
• The influence of globalization trends must be explicitly acknowledged within planning education and planning practice (Amirahmadi 1993).

Planning in the 21st Century

A major premise of this review is that despite these major challenges, or rather as a result of them, planning in the 21st century will clearly define itself in the context of guiding the process of sustainable development.

As in any time of fundamental change, there is great opportunity within the "crisis" noted above. Many writers have noted that planning education and the planning profession are ideally suited to address the challenges facing society. For example Rees (1995) states that "planners, by the very nature of their profession, are uniquely positioned to play a leadership role in this transition [to sustainability]. In this increasingly fragmented and specialized world, planning is the one academic discipline and professional pursuit that explicitly attempts to be holistic or at least integrative at the level of society as a whole."

In terms of planning education, Feldman (1994) calls for planning programs to "seriously define intentional social action as their object of study." As the only unit within the modern university to address the study of human settlements and their intentional transformation, Feldman believes that planning would win new respect as an academic discipline.

Similarly in the professional arena, it is important to note that planners are rapidly gaining increased power and influence supported by appropriate legislation (e.g. OCPs, EIAs, etc.).  As a result planners are increasingly being drawn into interagency and intergovernmental decision-making (Christensen 1993).  Planning, therefore, is no longer seen as an advisor to change, rather planning is seen as embedded in the process of change itself.

These examples all share a common message. Planners must take up the challenges posed by a rapidly changing world. Moreover, planners must have the foresight to guide the processes of change. In short, planners need to be both reactive and proactive, a fact captured elegantly by Witty (1994):

"Whether responding to the changes brought about by emerging ecological, economic and social forces or reshaping the impacts of local and global trends on quality of life, planners are constantly at the epicentre of a pressure point whirlwind."

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review of the dominant trends within the planning profession, highlighting contemporary views on the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by planners. The paper goes on to justify some of the key directions being undertaken at the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP).

This review focuses on papers written within the past five years in the following journals:

            Journal of Planning Education and Research

            Journal of the American Planning Association

            Plan Canada

            Journal of Planning Literature

            Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design

            Planning Outlook

            The Planner

Other sources were traced and included as a result of reviewing articles in these journals.

2.0  The Evolving Role of the Planner

Current Roles

"What are planners doing in today's labour market?" (Glasmeier and Kahn 1989). "What is their current role, and how can this be expected to change as we head into the twenty-first century?" (Witty 1994). These and other relevant questions have been asked in a number of pertinent surveys conducted by researchers in Canada, the United States and Europe in recent years. Their findings are useful for the purpose at hand.

In a recent Plan Canada article, Witty (1994) highlights some of the results of his survey of fifteen percent of the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) membership. While admittedly only accessing a portion of the broader Canadian planning profession, the results do provide some insight into the jobs undertaken by many planners in Canada. In terms of field specialization, the results were as follows:

These results lead Witty to draw three interesting conclusions. First, a number of the respondents specialize in more than one area. Second, planning degrees permit a wide field of specialization. And third, members of CIP come from ever-widening backgrounds. It should be noted that planners who choose to join CIP likely represent that portion of planners supportive of greater professional definition through association. In that sense, the above fields can be seen as defining the current "traditional" roles for professional planners in Canada.

The Glasmeier and Kahn survey (1989) included data from graduates of 47 U.S. planning schools and therefore captured a broader spectrum of the planning profession. They present their results of jobs held based on major field classifications as follows:

At first sight, the finding that 38% of respondents hold non-traditional planning jobs might not seem noteworthy; that is until we recognize the very broad definition of traditional planning used by the researchers. It included all of the following fields: land use planning, current land use planning, regional planning, comprehensive planning, environmental planning, physical planning, social planning, transportation planning, housing, human services planning, redevelopment and general planning. Unfortunately however they don't specifically define what constitutes a non-traditional planning job. Yet despite the inherent difficulties in even attempting to define the differences between a traditional versus a non-traditional planner, Glasmeier and Kahn correctly note that the important point is that "the field of planning has successfully responded to an increasingly complex world. Planning consists of sophisticated and multifaceted problems; thus the range of fields in which planning graduates find work is broadening" (Glasmeier and Kahn 1989).

There are other important findings in the Glasmeier and Kahn study as well. For instance, of all respondents, 53% work in the public sector, 30% in the private sector, 7% in the non-profit sector, and 10% in the academic/other sector. And further, "while there is a higher probability that work in non-traditional fields occurs outside the public sector, clearly government entities also employ non-traditional planners" (Glasmeier and Kahn 1989). These findings similarly support the notion that opportunities for professional planning practice are continually broadening.

Feldman (1994) offers strong arguments in favor of expanding the non-traditional sector of the planning profession, and suggests some implications for planning education. Aside from training students for roles as professional planners, Feldman outlines three additional role categories

• Lay Planner (e.g. citizen advisory board members, civic leaders
• Intellectual Planners (e.g. those interested purely in intentional collective action
• Activist Planners (e.g. community organizers, writers)

These roles are equally valid and equally as important as traditional planning roles, and open the profession up to greater participation. The intent of attracting a wider range of students toward the study of human settlements and their intentional transformation lies in the recognition of the wide impacts and serious consequences of planning initiatives. Importantly, Feldman (1994) believes that this focus would not water down the calibre of students attracted to graduate planning education. Rather, he believes it would force planning schools to demand adequate prior academic preparation as a prerequisite to the profound challenges within the field.

A corollary to the vision of an ever-broadening field in which planners choose to practice, is that there are not enough planners available to fill the jobs within even a narrowly defined core of traditional activity. Alterman (1992) adopts this viewpoint in a discussion of market share and potential impact, and concludes that in the U.S. (and presumably Canada as well) the wide number of professions and disciplines that offer overlapping skills will continue to occupy a significant portion of planning jobs. As a result planning practice will maintain its "lukewarm degree of professionalization" and not significantly increase its visibility (Alterman 1992). This alternative viewpoint is indicative of many such debates around planning education and practice.

A Review of the Debate Over Roles

One of the major debates within the literature ultimately relates back to Friedmann and Kuester's (1994) discussion of planning pluralism and collective identity. At the root of the debate are the two questions: what do planners do?, and how should the profession be defined? For instance, should planning as a profession focus purely on physical land use issues, or should it additionally encompass the wide array of social planning issues? In an attempt to address these questions, Lucy (1994) offers that "the guiding principle of urban and regional planning is that the field and profession should nurture healthy people in healthy places." Well said, but as we shall see this guiding principle supports both sides of the physical planning versus social planning debate.

Sawicki (1988) seems to have sparked the most recent round of controversy. He notes that opportunities abound to nurture healthy people in healthy places through the application of a well-defined core of knowledge and skills to issues such as urban design, environmental planning, and land use. Yet most planning Ph.D. programs are producing graduates with a focus on "other cognate disciplines, usually in the social sciences," who "cannot practice planning nor teach those who do" (Sawicki 1988). As a result Sawicki notes, the core concerns of the profession stagnate as practitioners lack the skills to pragmatically address pressing planning problems.

In a similar vein, strong arguments for clearly defining the profession as a community-scale design discipline are presented by Carter (1993). "Planners should understand and manipulate (plan, design, regulate) the forms, structures, textures, and components of community and the host landscape, and do so in a manner to attain positive social, economic, and environmental impacts." Carter uses this belief as the foundation of his offering - a new curriculum for city and regional planners. In his proposed curriculum, the emphasis is on addressing the community as a physical entity more so than as a socio/economic/ecological one. Design, as Carter states, is a powerful process by which values are applied.

Ironically, social planning proponents have long hung their hats on Lucy's credo that planning should nurture healthy people in healthy places. "Social planning is a process to develop and implement plans and programs responsive to social values and human service needs" (Checkoway 1987). This type of definition outlines the stance taken by many social planning advocates since its emergence the early 1970s. Indeed, it is hard to imagine addressing such pressing planning concerns as homelessness, promoting justice and equity in the provision of services, and local economic development without explicitly creating and then working towards a social planning agenda. The implications of a focus on social planning are that the planning roles become that of facilitator, coach and supporter (Ashton et al 1994), and the skills required that of facilitating, coalition-building and grassroots-organizing (Friedmann and Kuester 1994). In short, this changes the definition of the planner as "provider" to that of "enabler".

For context, it is important to note that debates around the role of the planner have been around for a long time. More than a decade ago, Gunton (1984) provided a brief description and history of eight professional planning roles: technocrat, public servant, referee, advocate, bureaucrat, state agent, social learner and social reformer. After outlining the underlying theoretical basis for each role, he goes on to point out that each offers important insights to the nature of planning, and that each suffers from serious weaknesses in practice. His conclusion is that there are many justifiable planning roles, and the important point is to understand which role is most applicable in which situation.

While the debates continue, the only common theme is that there is "a strong orientation to the practical implementation and outcome of plans, rather than simply to the rational making of plans" (Friedmann and Kuester 1994).

Emerging Roles

A recent survey conducted in the U.S. aimed at defining future trends in the planning profession. Friedmann and Kuester (1994) targeted 40 junior, middle-level and senior academics in the planning field. In response to the question, "What planning roles do you see becoming more salient over the next decade?", the survey found the following, ranked in order of most frequently to least frequently cited:

In formulating their answers, the academic respondents outlined a range of challenges arising from global and domestic instability, and diminishing resources. It is interesting to note that the roles identified are not specifically linked to traditional or non-traditional jobs within the public or private sector. As these academics looked into the future, they found it more important to suggest how the challenges and forces of change within the profession should be addressed within broad planning role categories. This is useful to our purpose, for as we shall see in the next section, these roles have definite implications on the skills required by planners.

Friedmann and Kuester (1994) conclude their analysis of newly emerging roles by noting that the first three in the list - entrepreneurial planning, mobilizing community action and mediation/negotiation - contain the crux of where the planning profession is heading. This conclusion is supported by two main points: i) the growth of the private planning consultant sector in these fields in recent years, and ii) the politicization of planning which has brought into focus the involvement of government bureaucracies, political organizations, corporations and organized civil society in the planning process. Other authors seem to concur with this conclusion, and offer their own view of what these future planning roles might entail.

Christensen (1993) develops compelling arguments that are consistent with Friedmann and Kuester's most frequently cited role - entrepreneurial planning. She believes that planners require organizational and political savvy to be truly effective within the intergovernmental arrangements and interactive decision-making processes that they are now commonly immersed. Further, she believes that important components of savvy - meeting skills, adaptability, capability to invent options, and understanding organizational and political incentives and dynamics - can become part of a planning education curriculum.

Ashton et al (1994) offer insight into the emerging roles of the planner under the umbrella of mobilizing community action. As an outcome of their work on a sustainable communities project run by the Rural and Small Town Programme at Mount Allison University, they see three important planning roles beginning to emerge.

• The Facilitator focuses on strategic planning, self-help and community economic development by helping communities to diagnose problems and work out solutions.
• The Coach helps the community ask the right questions and shares expertise on policy, regulations and funding.
• The Supporter is a champion for the community and includes all types of resource people who are interested in the community's success.

While these ideas emerged as the result of work in the rural and small town community context, they are readily transferable to any situation where grassroots community empowerment is required for improved planning processes.

The third most important emerging role for the planner - as mediator/negotiator - is similarly supported within the literature. Using the example of public policy-making, Rabinovitz (1989) notes that planners are now expected to be much more involved in the negotiation process that it entails. A planner's task now involves "the integration of their substantive and technical knowledge with negotiating capacity" (Rabinovitz 1989). This is certainly true considering the plethora of planning processes that have emerged for the management of natural resources in recent times (CORE, 1995). Further, given that increasing racial, ethnic and gender conflicts were identified as a major urban planning challenge in the Friedmann and Kuester study (1994), mediating disagreements between groups is an increasingly important planning skill.

Some might argue that these emerging roles as described are really not all that new, and that the emergence of sustainable development is just another fashionable phrase to enter the field of planning. It is therefore necessary to probe deeper, into the knowledge, skills and attitudes implied by these roles to capture their true meaning.

3.0  The Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes of Tomorrow's Planners

Any look into the goals of graduate planning education must ultimately reflect on the knowledge, skills and attitudes imparted upon students. It is undeniable that in order to contribute to the planning field graduates require:

1. a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding in their chosen substantive field of planning practice;
2. a set of skills that will enable them to function efficiently and effectively; and
3. a firmly established set of values and ethics that shape their attitudes toward professional practice.

The literature reviewed offers insights into each of these considerations.

Packaging Planning Knowledge

What knowledge is needed by planners to function within a rapidly changing professional environment? The recent survey of CIP members identified the four most important categories of knowledge to professional planners in Canada: i) planning methods, ii) planning theory, iii) inclusion of other disciplines, and iv) policy development (Witty 1994). Although Witty does not go on to more specifics within these categories, we note in the literature a wide range of specific knowledge areas of importance.

From a broader perspective, Niebanck (1993) offers a framework for organizing this wide range of knowledge. He notes that planning knowledge can be packaged in essentially three ways:

• Method:  The planning approach, style, and tasks (e.g. long-range planning, strategic planning, crisis planning).
• Intention:  What planning is designed to accomplish (e.g. optimization of economic benefits, improved stakeholder involvement, more equality).
• Substance:  What planning is applied to (e.g. housing, natural resources, health care, transportation).

These categories can serve as a useful starting point. But as Niebanck notes, we must rearrange or repackage on an ongoing basis to incorporate new planning knowledge as it is created.

Dalton (1989) offers another view of how planning knowledge can be organized and packaged as the result of the analysis of over 100 empirical studies of planning practice. A conceptual framework is defined with two dimensions: i) the aspect of planning practice (e.g. research, problem solving, plan making), and ii) the unit of analysis (e.g. individual planner, planning agency, planning situation). The framework, Dalton argues, can be used as a basis for organising existing knowledge, and can be expanded to incorporate new forms of knowledge as they emerge. She also notes that the framework can "reveal where gaps occur and where opportunities exist to bring more coherence to our knowledge about planning practice" (Dalton 1989).

From a planning education perspective, these attempts at packaging planning knowledge reveal several important points. First, there is value in critically analysing the knowledge being taught with the overall goal of developing competent planning praticioners. Second, there is value in being systematic and organized in the approach to this task. And finally, planning educators must face the challenge of continual renewal; of continually updating their curricula to incorporate emerging knowledge of planning theory and practice.

Skills: The Planners Toolbox

In their recent survey of planning educators, Friedmann and Kuester (1994) included the question," what will be the critical skills required of graduate planners over the next decade?" Their findings were as follows:

These data show that the traditional skill areas of analysis and research, must be balanced with multicultural understanding, communication and interactive skills.

Returning to Witty's (1994) survey of CIP members, we note that the most important skill areas for professional planners are the ability to operate with an interdisciplinary approach, and the ability to analyze, write, present and communicate effectively. Witty urges that these five skill areas are "the heartbeat of training relevancy".  A further array of skill areas recognized by practicing planners as being important are offered under the title of useful tools and processes. These are: public involvement, conflict resolution, site planning, financial analysis, shared decision-making, facilitation, urban design, graphics, sustainable development techniques, project advocacy, and computer analysis.

Although using different terminology, we find a consistent message on key skill areas for planners in the United Kingdom. In a discussion of the skills of planning school graduates and the needs of the employment market, Bailey (1995) notes that the core skills that any good graduate should have are: problem solving, synthesis, communication skills, innovation and lateral thinking, and a good knowledge of information technologies.

Attitudes: Putting Values into Practice

For more than two decades now the belief in planning as a totally objective practice and in planners as value-neutral practitioners has been laid to rest. Planning is now widely recognized as being value-sensitive (Friedmann and Kuester 1994). For example, with an emphasis on social justice and environmental sustainability, many planners have moved closer to an advocacy role. It is therefore important to explicitly examine the role of education in forming the attitudes of planners.

Whether viewed from a physical design, social impact or environmental perspective, planning is ultimately shaped by the attitudes of its practitioners. These attitudes are reflected in the approaches taken to problems, in the methods used for research, and in the style used for design. In short, all planning activities involve some form of planners putting their values into practice. Not surprisingly, educators who focus on developing country planning issues strongly advocate this recognition. Burayidi (1993) for instance calls for planners to be "familiar with, and make explicit, the value systems that shape their decisions."

This recognition of the importance of attitudes is reflected in the Planning Accreditation Board's criteria for planning curricula. In noting the "value components" of an accreditable planning curriculum, they state:

"The planning program shall provide students with the basis for becoming ethical practitioners, who are aware of, and responsible for, the way their activities affect and promote important values......." (Planning Accreditation Board 1992)

Graduates of accredited planning programs are now expected to identify and debate the importance and effects of values in relation to actual planning issues. Examples provided by the Board include:

1. Issues of equity, social justice, economic welfare, and efficiency in the use of resources.
2. The role of government and citizen participation in a democratic society and the balancing of individual and collective rights and interests.
3. Respect for diversity of views and ideologies.
4. The conservation of natural resources and of the significant cultural heritages embedded in the built environment.
5. The ethics of professional practice and behaviour, including the relationship to clients and the public, and the role of citizens in democratic participation.

(Planning Accreditation Board 1992)

Clearly then, the understanding of planning as a value-sensitive profession is here to stay.

The Dilemma of Breadth vs. Depth

Given the broad range of knowledge, skills and attitudes required by planners, and the ever-widening domain in which planners practice, one of the key challenges facing planning educators today is the reconciliation of breadth versus depth in their curricula.

There are numerous articles that attempt to justify the need for in depth coverage of a particular knowledge or skill area. Examples include Godschalk and McMahon's (1992) discussion of "staffing the GIS revolution", and Harris's (1994) observations on the growing importance of computers in professional practice. It should be noted that articles advocating in-depth coverage are not limited to the technocratic realm. For instance Lusk and Kantrowitz (1990) outline a detailed communications studio, and Burby (1992) presents a syllabus for comprehensive impact assessment (social, environmental and fiscal). What these articles share in common is a well-developed argument linking the subject matter to some aspect of professional practice.

However, equally well-developed arguments are developed in support of planning maintaining or even expanding its breadth of coverage. Lucy (1994) supports this notion by stating that "planning academics and practitioners should consider expanding, rather than limiting, their roles and subjects, in particular by overlapping more into public administration and policy analysis." Even in the more traditional realm of physical design Lucy argues than planning, rather than architecture and landscape architecture, is best suited to cope with the breadth of social, economic, geographic and political issues that are inevitably involved. However, these arguments in favour of broadening the profession (and therefore the planning education curricula) have come under sharp criticism.

Sawicki (1988) notes that the side effects of this broadening include a loss of professional identity, a lack of focus and declining opportunities. He states that "while we drift, our colleagues in civil engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture are making inroads into what has traditionally been our substantive work" (Sawicki 1988). Alterman (1992) notes that competition with related professions is endemic on both sides of the Atlantic, and suggests that comparative research on this topic would help planning educators who are in search for a strategy for building up the profession.

The views of more moderate writers may help to address the question of inter-professional competition, and ultimately resolve the planning education breadth versus depth dilemma. Feldman (1994) reminds us that as early as the late 1950s Perloff stated the view that "because of its inherent breadth, planning education must 'continually nourish itself by intimate contact' with fields having strong urban and regional emphasis." From this perspective, planning should strive not to compete with other related professions, but rather to cooperate and collaborate with them. Chapman (1992) goes even further and advocates the "interprofessionalism" of all education programs concerned with the built environment. From the perspective of planning education this would mean that: i) basic skills courses could be shared with other disciplines, ii) more opportunities for interdisciplinary projects would arise, and iii) a wider range of specializations for planning graduates could be explored.

These latter writers are of the view that there really is no dilemma - that the long-standing view of a planner as a "generalist-with-a-specialty" is still valid. In today's world professional planners will need both breadth and depth in terms of their knowledge and skill areas: breadth of grounding in the basic principles of planning theory and planning methods (Witty 1994); depth in terms of a specialization that enables a solid contribution to be made in the substantive fields of planning.

Experiential Learning

The role of experiential learning in shaping the knowledge, skills and attitudes of planning students is a subject of so much interest in the planning education literature in recent times that it requires separate attention.

Tyson and Low (1987) offer the most comprehensive description of the use of experiential learning in planning education. In their work, they justify experiential learning broadly on education theory, develop a model to guide the process of experiential learning, and finally test the model as part of a core environmental planning course at the University of Melbourne. One of the important conclusions of this work is that experiential learning gives students practice in planning without the real world pressures and consequences. Similarly, Christensen's (1993) development and use of planning templates aims at providing planning students with an "interactive, experiential and situational" learning experience.

Many papers call for increased practical experience on the part of planning graduates as a core part of their graduate training. This experience can be in the form of activist research, social involvement, or studio design courses for real clients (e.g. responses to the survey of Friedmann and Kuester 1994). In the U.K. as well, Robinson (1992) calls for more student involvement with the clients of planning - local communities, developers, council members and professionals from other disciplines. Most planning educators would undoubtedly agree with Galloway's (1992) proposal that these activities would strengthen links between the profession and academia.

The concept of experiential learning has been around for decades in the form of the internship model. Woodcock and Dubois (1994) offer the latest description of internships in planning education. They describe the internship goals, process, and three-fold responsibility involving a student, a professor, and a professional. In the U.K. several planning schools have taken this concept of a tripartite contract even further by developing a "Year Out" for planning students (Alden 1992). The Year Out is a required full-time professional practice year, usually undertaken between the second and third years of a four year B.Sc. program.

The effectiveness of all forms of experiential learning programs is proven according to these writers. From the student perspective, experiential learning opportunities are popular because they provide the benefits of skill development, networking opportunity, and resume enhancement.

4.0  The SCARP Program in Context

Support for the Focus on Sustainability

In recent years SCARP has adopted a focus on sustainability as the primary component of its vision. The stated mission is to enhance the transition to sustainability through excellence in integrated policy and planning research, professional education and community service. Indeed, sustainability is seen both as an integrative concept (i.e. emphasizing the interrelationship of social, economic and ecological issues) and as a guiding principle.

Support for this focus on sustainability is readily evident in the planning education literature. According to many writers, opportunities abound for incorporating sustainability into work at the local and regional scale at which most traditional planning occurs. For example Beatley (1995b) writes, "planners clearly have an important role to play in promoting the dialogue about sustainability and in conceiving public-policy solutions that promote community sustainability".

Recent publications suggest an important trend toward incorporating the sustainability concepts put forth by the Brundtland Commission (WCED 1987) into traditional urban and regional planning policy and theory. A few notable examples quoted by Beatley (1995b and 1995a) in various fields of North American planning include:

• Urban/Community Design     
• The New Urbanism (Katz 1994)
• Toward Sustainable Communities (Roseland 1992)
• Sustainable Communities (Van der Ryn and Calthorpe 1991)
• Community Issues/ Social Equality
• The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society (Etzioni 1993)
• Shaping a National Urban Agenda (Grigsby and Godschalk eds. 1993)
• Ecological Issues
• Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes (Baldwin et al 1993)
• The Ecological City: Preserving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity (Platt et al 1994)

Other countries are also starting to work their way through the implications of sustainable development principles on planning practice. In the U.K. for instance, Begg (1991) highlights that "the acceptance of the notion of sustainable development marks something of a watershed in the evolution of town and country planning." The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 offered a mountain of new material to be considered in the form of Agenda 21, the detailed action plan that set out specific initiatives which nations should undertake in the name of sustainable development. Selman (1993) offers an analysis of how the principles contained in Agenda 21 permeate every area of planning activity, and how the key themes relate to the efforts of the Royal Town Planning Institute's task force committees. Similar efforts by planning associations in other countries might help to provide some worthwhile direction and vision.

At present, the implications of a commitment to sustainable development by the planning profession and planning educators are not fully clear. What is clear however, is that there are fundamental opportunities for planning to redefine and assert itself within the emerging context of sustainability.

Support for the Concept of Core Courses & Stream Specializations

The concept of preparing professional planners as "generalists-with-a-specialty" through a course of studies organized around a common core curriculum dates back to Harvey S. Perloff's (1957) Education for Planning: City, State, and Regional. This book is generally considered as the classic rationale and blueprint for the modern planning curriculum (Feldman 1994). Yet much has changed in the last four decades, and it is necessary to revisit this vision of planners and their education.

Today, the debate around core courses seems to be widespread in the planning education field. At one extreme, Carter (1993) calls for renewed dedication to community-scale design, and outlines a three-year curriculum with two full years of core training in history, theories, principles, graphic communications and problem-solving methods. This vision is clearly influenced by a desire for planning to pursue a collective professional identity (see section 1). At the other extreme, others argue how the pluralistic nature of planning limits the usefulness of such a rigid core course approach. "Though ideally  we may want to encourage students to focus on a more general core of planning education, students feel pressured to specialize. It is therefore difficult to compel students to absorb a more intensive set of core courses (assuming these could be identified), so long as planning education remains beholden to a two-year curriculum" (Friedmann and Kuester 1994).

Lucy (1994) attempts to bridge the gap between these extremes by focusing the discussion on the central mission of planning. He notes that "in a field whose members are confident about their central principles, specialties branching from the main trunk are easily accommodated" (Lucy 1994). Medicine is offered as an example where more than one hundred specialties have been certified. Claydon (1993) approaches the debate in a similar fashion. He notes that planning programs with a large, pre-determined core set of required courses are no longer tenable or desirable. On the other hand, he notes there is a danger that programs with an undefined core are too flexible and lack the coherence required of a vocational degree. The resulting challenge is to strike the optimum balance.

The approach used by many planning programs in Canada, the United States, and the U.K. has been to develop a well-defined core set of courses, along with modules of courses focused on different substantive bodies of knowledge and skills (e.g. Claydon 1993, Witty 1994, Alterman 1992). Indeed, the PAB accreditation process in the United States is structured to encourage such an approach (Alterman 1992). The objectives of this approach should be to provide students with a common foundation of theories and methods as well as increased choice and opportunity for specialization.

Therefore, while the label of planners as "generalists-with-a-specialty" may be dated, the concept seems to hold true. Planners require both the grounding and underlying purpose as provided by a well-defined core, and a definable niche within a broad profession as provided by specialized course modules.

References:

ACSP Commission on Undergraduate Education 1990.  "Creating the Future for Undergraduate Education in Planning." Journal of Planning Education and Research, 10(1): 15-26.

Alden, J. 1992.  "Year Out." The Planner, 78(10): 9.

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