Educating spatial planners for the age of co-creation: the need to risk community, science and practice involvement in planning programmes and curricula [Editorial]

Planners are often billed as leaders and change agents of the (un)built environment. It is, however, important to recognize that they are in reality only one of many players in a sea of actors involved in shaping future developments and projects. Plans and interventions today are co-created and in fact co-evolve relying as much on the input, cooperation and actions of inhabitants, users, developers, politicians as on expert planners and a wide variety of other professions. In this introductory section, we, as editors of this special issue, posit that planners therefore require skills for co-creation drawing on science and working with other disciplines. In turn, planning programmes and curricula need to incorporate learning and teaching approaches that prepare students in higher education for working in co-creation settings by purposefully exposing them to learning environments that involve community, science and practice. The collection of papers, which were presented initially at the 2014 Association of European Schools of Planning congress in Utrecht hereafter showcase curriculum developments and pedagogical research of planning educators from different world regions that in the round shed light on a variety of issues and challenges of embedding learning and teaching for co-creation and co-evolution. In particular, we elaborate on the tensions of employing transformational yet high-risk pedagogies in higher education settings that are becoming increasingly risk-averse and streamlined and we suggest an agenda for planning curriculum developmentAccepted Author ManuscriptSpatial Planning and Strateg

Multiversity of the 21st Century - examining opportunities for integrating community engagement in planning curricula

This paper examines student-community engagement activity in planning. This is a subset of university–community engagement, and is a point of overlap between such engagement and planning education. Community engagement activity enables students to learn in situ practical skills within live projects, while community partners may benefit from technical knowhow, and labour input. Based on a UK-wide survey and three in-depth case studies, the paper explores the pedagogical designs underpinning community engagement activities involving students, as well as the various capacities in which the different participants – students, instructors and community members – act. The analysis reveals considerable diversity in approaches. An alignment of student engagement activities in the planning curriculum with emerging transformative co-learning models of university-community engagement could offer novel opportunities for the discipline of planning and their impact on communities as well as the fields standing in today’s multiversities

What do students value in Built Environment education?

In order to enhance the student learning experience, students’ opinions and values need to be analysed and understood. This paper provides a review and general analysis of how students learn and what teaching approaches and learning opportunities they consider most valuable and essential to their future careers in the Built Environment professions. Findings are based on statements and reflections from five student essays on the subject

A practice-based approach to developing creativity in higher education

There is increasing demand for professional level creativity. In order to facilitate such professionally orientated creativity development through tertiary education we suggest that students need learning experiences different from those conventionally provided in Higher Education degree programmes today. This paper reports on an ongoing project which aims to introduce professionally orientated creativity development in the undergraduate planning degree course at Cardiff University’s School of City and Regional Planning. The project represents a response to calls for education providers to equip planning graduates with creative problem solving and visioning abilities. Considering the professional profile of planners, creativity development focuses specifically on ‘Creative Leadership’ and ‘Creative Urban Planning Intelligence’. The authors’ efforts and experiences of introducing creativity development led to the creation of a forward looking curriculum model that combines old and new pedagogies and content. Progress toward implementing this model in Cardiff is traced and critically evaluated by sharing lessons from the first three years of experimentation, discussing different variations of intervention and their effects. Introducing changes in established programmes and curricula is difficult. Our experience demonstrates that the (nonconformist) collaboration between a lecturer and an expert creativity consultant employed in this project has been useful and stimulating in facilitating such changes

Planning Education in Germany: Impacts of the Bologna Agreement

Following the 1999 Bologna agreement, higher education institutions in Germany and other European countries have engaged in a fundamental reform of their programs and curricula with the goal to enhance compatibility and comparability of degrees across Europe. This paper provides an initial review of the impact of these structural reforms on German urban and regional planning education, for which bachelor�s and maste