TRACK 10: EDUCATION

Interdisciplinary planning education: challenges, dialogues, innovations

Chairs:  

• Jean Michel Roux, Université Bordeaux Montaigne 
• Joanne Tippett, University of Manchester
• Lisa Marie Brunner, Norwegian University of Science and University

We are in a time of major upheaval and change, including net zero ambitions and new approaches to seeing nature as having rights, such as rivers as stakeholders in decisions about the future. Planning has always involved working across disciplines, with engineering and economics as well as spatial analysis, but we now need to work more closely with ecology, natural science and landscape planners. The planning profession has an opportunity to make a game-changing contribution to shifts to a sustainable and just society, but this will require very different skills from those of the past. 

Teaching about climate change and biodiversity loss can induce a great sense of eco-anxiety and anguish. As educators, we must consider how to balance optimism and eco-anxiety for ourselves and our students. At the same time as considering the voices of local communities and the natural world, we are tasked with delivering major infrastructure projects and events. What is our role as educators in helping students to navigate these tensions? 

This track invites theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions on the role of planning education in helping secure sustainable and just futures, innovative pedagogical approaches to developing the necessary skills and competencies and navigating the tensions involved. The track also invites consideration of alternative routes for planning education, such as apprenticeships and real-life projects, and novel ways to encourage cross-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary learning.  

Keywords: Planning education, pedagogy, planning curricula, community engagement skills, sustainability skills, cross-disciplinary learning, trans-disciplinary learning

This track will host:

• Special Session 16: Generative Artificial Intelligence in Planning Education: Game changer?*
• Special Session 17: Sustainability transformation of planning: Readjusting planning education for more-than-human perspectives