Facilitating professional engagement with planning research

The context for this project is the limited connectivity between applied planning research and professional planning practice. The planning profession, by its very nature, is continually developing plans, policies and strategies to guide place-based management and development. An assumption guiding the research is that sound evidence is useful if not essential to inform good planning practice. This assumption does not hold for all planning practice - statutory planning and other policy implementation activities are, for example, largely informed by existing policy frameworks. However, in most strategic planning or policy development contexts (including statutory reform), an argument for the relevance of an evidence base can be made. While not all research aims to directly inform practice – such as research of a conceptual or theoretical nature – there is a significant amount of applied urban research produced that has discernible implications for policy and practice. Unfortunately, much of the research base that could inform and improve professional planning practice is difficult to access. There are also other barriers to knowledge exchange, including limited professional engagement with research outputs; and limited or poorly tailored research outputs for a professional audience. This project aims to provide recommendations on how to better connect Australian urban planning practice to the evidence base within urban planning research outputs. To do so the project explores barriers to, and opportunities for, better connecting professional planning practice with applied planning research