Speaker
Description
Urban planning education faces challenges related to rapid global change, social and spatial transformations in cities, and climate change. It promotes sustainable practices, place-making, and participatory models while emphasising interdisciplinarity as essential for addressing contemporary urban issues. New educational approaches must incorporate emerging technologies and renew existing thinking, frameworks, methods, and long-standing technical, cultural, institutional, and social premises and perspectives to improve teaching and learning practices.
The role of design in planning education is emphasised as a way to engage with the complex processes of urban development and planning. Since urban planning draws from a variety of disciplines—including geography, economics, history, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, transport, and engineering—its interdisciplinary nature fosters a critical understanding of spatial forms and processes. This approach encourages moving beyond normative methods through design exploration, testing, and performance.
Students are encouraged to adopt a design mindset and develop flexible, interdisciplinary approaches. The student planner’s work must be adaptable to the studied context and the actors involved, modifiable through practice, and aligned with the specific interests of individuals and society.
In addition to developing writing and speaking skills, students are encouraged to communicate complex urban processes using clear graphic representations that are easily understandable and transferable through digital technologies for the production, distribution, presentation, and exchange of knowledge.
The “Site Planning” course at Norwegian University of Science and Technology provides examples of how students address these tasks, working in interdisciplinary teams composed of future planners, engineers, facility developers and managers, and other professionals.
| Keywords | urban planning education, design, interdisciplinarity, site planning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
