Shaping the planning profession of the future: the role of planning education

The emergence and development of any profession are closely tied to concern s about the education and training of those who are to be identifiable as p rofessionals. The planning profession is no exception. Thus, greater import ance has been attached throughout its history in the United Kingdom to the need for planning education to adapt to the changing demands of the profess ion 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 mo re for such changes to be made as the role of the planning profession in th e 21st century was perceived as being quite different from that of the prec eding decades. Within this context, in this paper I draw on the findings of focus groups held with recent graduates of planning education and senior p ractitioners in the planning field from both the public and the private sec tor. 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 simp ly 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 c urrently 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 p lanners to the task but to play a part in shaping that task itself.