Potential topics

Initial discussions among SCARP students about the three sub-questions being used to launch the dialogue suggest what might be the general nature of the recommendations and to whom they might be directed. Underlying the P4T Project and the envisaged recommendation is one major premise:

Planners have made a huge contribution and they have the potential to make a much greater contribution in meeting the challenges of urban sustainability.

Ongoing debates among planning practitioners and academics along with the government, private sector and civil society organizations with whom they are engaged make this dialogue most timely. Recommendations from planning students on what are enduring questions in new and changing contexts have the potential to make a great difference.

The following are among the topics for the recommendations and those to whom they would be primarily directed:

Professional planners organizations

• Definitions and recognition of diversity in planning and planners
• Implications for membership requirements and activities
• Accreditation of planning education programs – criteria and procedures
• Relations with other city building professions
• Continuing professional development

Planning academics

• Curriculum – substantive and procedural
• Research – planning topics and planning education
• Education programs – colleges, technical institutes, universities
• Location and role in the university – departments and faculties, professional programs, interdisciplinarity, community and policy oriented
• Promotion and tenure
• Pracademics and practitioners in residence

Planning organizations

• Government – employer of planners and planning, authority over planning and planners
• Private sector – employer of planners and planning, regulatee
• Civil society – employer of planners and planning, volunteer

It is recognized that whatever the recommendations they will need to be expressed in ways that reflect the widely different contexts and prescriptive and descriptive views about the future in which planners will be engaged in planning (e.g. planning in the cities of the South differs in significant ways from the North; and the nature and extent of emphasis on participation in planning processes varies greatly among governance systems). Participants are encouraged to contribute from the outset their thoughts on how to focus and shape recommendations so that they might influence the dialogue.

• Drafting recommendations (link to where we pose questions to shape the dialogue on this)