Teaching planning theory as planner roles in urban planning education

Abstract

Planning theory is often portrayed as a subject that urban planning students find too abstract and fail to see the relevance of. This paper advocates the perspective that planning theory can be made more student-friendly. This requires, firstly, that academic discussions about the relevance of planning theory for urban planning practice are integrated into the course module. If students are to appreciate planning theory, it requires that they understand how planning theory can inspire planning practice. Secondly, it requires careful considerations to the pedagogy of planning theory. The paper suggests that teaching planning theory as a variety of planner roles offers a helpful pedagogical approach for helping students construct their identities as urban planners. The paper builds on the author’s own experiences of teaching planning theory in a master’s urban planning programme, and has been written as part of the author’s completion of a pedagogical course for university lecturers (The pedagogical course for university lecturers is a 10 ECTS course for assistant professors, which provides the participants with the pedagogical and didactic foundations for a university career).

Keywords:

• Urban planning
• planning theory
• planner roles
• planning education
• reflective practitioner

Notes

1. The official course evaluation is conducted by the end of the semester. Students are emailed an online questionnaire in SurveyXact. Besides indicating how satisfied the students are with the course, there is also an opportunity to provide additional comments in a textbox. As indicated the class size is fairly small (10–20 students). The response rate to the online questionnaire has varied significantly over the years from 50 pct. in 2013 to 89 pct. in 2015.