The State of Planning and Planning Education in Europe 2015

Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Definite Space – Fuzzy Responsibility, Prague, 13-16th July, 2015 Paper presented to Track 11 of the Annual Congress of Planning Education Schools in Prague/Czech Republic, July 2015. An earlier version of this paper has been published in disp : The Planning Review, No. 200 , (1/2015), 86-90.Since planning has become an academic discipline, debates on the role of planning in the postindustrial society and on the right approach to educate and train planners for this society seem to never end. The community of planners across Europe argues constantly that planning (be it urban and regional or spatial or environmental) is always in a crisis and does not receive the required political support from European, national, regional or local governments. The extent to which planning does address social disparities and can contribute to territorial cohesion is a much-discussed theme among planners. There are continuous debates about the right approach to planning education, between architecture, urbanism or geography and planning as an independent discipline. Finally there are ongoing controversies about the role of the European Commission in intervening into local or national urban policies. Addressing these debates, the paper presents the outcome of a survey among planners and practitioners on the occasion of the publication of the 200th issue of the Swiss planning journal: disp: The Planning Review. Randomly selected renowned academic planners and practitioners from 18 countries in Europe have been asked to respond to six questions concerning the state-of-the-art of planning and planning education in 2015. The responses were in English, French, German and Italian the four languages of the only multi-lingual planning journal in Europe. A synthesis of the 34 responses to our questions is given in this paper. 29th Annual AESOP 2015 Congress | July 13–16, 2015 | Prague, Czech Republic 1685.Published Versio