Shaping the Planning Profession of the Future: The Role of Planning Education

The emergence and development of any profession are closely tied to concerns about the education and training of those who are to be identifiable as professionals. The planning profession is no exception. Thus, greater importance has been attached throughout its history in the United Kingdom to the need for planning education to adapt to the changing demands of the profession which it is seen to serve and, at intervals, there have been calls for quite a different education agenda to be developed to reflect the changing nature of planning in practice. In the late 1990s, there were calls once more for such changes to be made as the role of the planning profession in the 21st century was perceived as being quite different from that of the preceding decades. Within this context, in this paper I draw on the findings of focus groups held with recent graduates of planning education and senior practitioners in the planning field from both the public and the private sector. These findings suggest that, although the calls for planning education to change in line with the changing role of the planning professional are strong, there is in fact a great deal of uncertainty over what this role is at the present time and what it is likely to be in the future. I therefore call for those responsible for the delivery of planning education not simply to take at face value the current demands for change, but to explore the source of these demands in more depth and to uncover the confusion which currently exists over the future of the planning profession. I conclude that, although the perceived role of the planner remains in a state of flux, it is the role of the providers of planning education not simply to fit the planners to the task but to play a part in shaping that task itself.