Speaker
Description
The extent to which urban design is part of planning education can vary between countries and even within a country between specific university programmes. The mode of teaching urban design (studio project versus lecture) can also vary (Faga, 2019). Being educated as a planner in Germany where urban design is a key part of planning curricula, it always surprised me that this can be different in the UK. So I want to understand why that is and explore the scope for improving this.
As a first step I plan to analyse the extent of urban design content in planning curricula for RTPI accredited master programmes. Then I plan to compare this to German university planning curricula. I also plan to compare the accreditation requirements for planning programmes – so what is required to be a fully accredited planner.
One working hypothesis is that the discretionary planning system in England and other parts of the UK does not require planners to be urban designers, because in development management, planners respond to proposals including urban design concepts, hence would not need to know how to create urban design themselves. This is in contrast to regulatory systems, where publicly developed zoning plans often work as a rigid urban design regulation (Schulze Bäing and Webb, 2020). To explore this, I plan to compare the English planning practice to the practice in Germany, where a detailed zoning system requires local authority planners to have detailed urban design knowledge.
References
References
FAGA, B. 2019. Urban Design. In: NANCY GREEN LEIGH, S. P. F., SUBHRAJIT GUHATHAKURTA, BRUCE STIFTEL (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of International Planning Education. 1 ed. New York: Routledge.
SCHULZE BÄING, A. & WEBB, B. 2020. Planning Through Zoning. Available: https://www.rtpi.org.uk/research/2020/september/planning-through-zoning/ [Accessed 31/01/2024].
| Keywords | urban design; planning education; zoning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
