Mismatch Between Planning Education and Practice: Contemporary Educational Challenges and Conflicts Confronting Young Planners

The long-neglected task of defining the discipline of planning, describing the multiplicity of influences impinging upon it and unravelling the complementary (and even contradictory) discourses constituting it probably means probing the core of planning practice and revisiting planning education itself (Davoudi & Pendlebury, 2010; Goldstein & Carmin, 2006). According to Davoudi and Pendlebury, “Although planning has evolved into a distinct discipline in institutional terms, its intellectual underpinning has remained ill-defined”. Moreover, “periodic changes to planning education have neglected the epistemic aspects of the discipline” (Davoudi & Pendlebury, 2010: 613)