Track 06 PLANNING EDUCATION

Track chairs: Christian Peer, Juliana Martins, Claudia Rot

Educating future planners about the possibilities and challenges of greening and decarbonising cities and regions is a theme of growing importance in both research and practice. Planning education has a responsibility to prepare future practitioners and academics to address these complex challenges while contributing to the creation of inclusive, democratic, and resilient places. How are planning curricula developing the knowledge, skills and capabilities needed to make cities and regions more climate resilient and to lead transitions towards low-carbon futures? How can planning education address the physical, social, and ethical implications of these transitions? And what knowledge and skills are needed to imagine and shape alternative forms of sustainable urban living? 

This track explores how planning education is responding to the challenges and opportunities of the Grey to Green transition, alongside wider contemporary challenges including social inequality, housing, demographic change, migration, urban and rural transformation, and democratic participation. It invites contributions on planning education as pedagogy, considering teaching and learning approaches, methods and practices; as programme, including curricula, competencies, professional profiles, and interdisciplinarity; and as institution, addressing organisational settings, resources, internationalisation and partnerships, and the role of planning schools within professional, political and societal contexts. 

We welcome a diversity of themes and innovative approaches, including the integration of research and learning; studio and project-based teaching; collaborative and community-engaged learning; digital methods and artificial intelligence; critical, decolonial and feminist perspectives; and the development of ethical judgement, and reflexivity. Contributions may be conceptual, empirical, comparative, practice-based or methodological, and may address all levels of planning education and professional development, from undergraduate programmes and postgraduate education to doctoral training and lifelong learning. Reflections on the tensions between education, knowledge production and planning practice are particularly encouraged. 

Keywords: Planning education; Sustainability education; Inclusive pedagogies; Curricula; Interdisciplinary Learning; Planning Competencies and Skills; Digital methods and AI in education