The Relevancy of North American Planning Education for Overseas Practice: A Survey of Graduates

Abstract

In the long-standing discussion of how to best prepare urban planning students to practice effectively in other countries, scholars generally fall into two camps: those that take a general principles approach and those that argue that planning is best taught within a specific context Many argue that North American planning education is irrelevant for practice in other countries, but little empirical

An Experiment in the Internationalization of Planning Education

“…Seemingly at odds with this comparative, mutual learning approach to planning education are the findings of a survey of more than two hundred graduates of American planning programs who work overseas. Hinojosa, Lyons, and Zinn (1992) found the transatlantic generalizability of American education to be high. One interpretation of these findings is that they support the utility of a general principles approach to planning education rather than one sensitive to the different cultural contexts within which planning practice occurs.…”

Bringing Practice to the Classroom: Using a Deliberative Learning and Case Study Approach to Teach International Planning

“…Despite the limited ability of smaller programs, in particular, to offer field-based opportunities, study abroad courses are the most commonly discussed approach for teaching about international planning practice in the literature (Hinojosa, Lyons, and Zinn 1993; Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff 2005; Abramson 2005; Dandekar 2009; Stiftel 2009; Rubbo 2010; Sletto 2013; Yigitcanlar 2013; Klopp et al 2014). These same planning educators and others, however, confirm what our survey suggests—that field-based programs are costly, time-consuming, and challenging to facilitate well and are therefore occasional, rather than regular, components of most international planning programs.…”

“…Reviews and commentaries about US planning curricula and surveys of practicing planners have expressed concerns about the limited exposure students have to the experiences, practices, and contexts where planning professionals work, in both domestic (Friedmann 1996; Edwards and Bates 2011; Forester 2013; Greenlee, Edwards, and Anthony 2015) and international contexts (Hinojosa, Lyons, and Zinn 1993; Pezzoli and Howe 2001; Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff 2005; Stiftel 2009). In addition to more practice-based instruction, planning educators have also called for more active learning approaches to better prepare students for dynamic planning environments (Shepherd and Cosgrif 1998; Wolf-Powers 2013), critiquing the heavy reliance on readings and lectures about theory as “convenient for faculty .…”

“…Planning educators increasingly recognize that they must expose their students to contexts outside of their home countries (Hinojosa, Lyons, and Zinn 1993; Stiftel 2009; Stiftel et al 2009; Dandekar 2009). In the United States, efforts to legitimize the teaching of international planning issues began in earnest in the late 1980s, leading to an edited book, Breaking the Boundaries (Sanyal 1990), and an Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) National Commission report distributed at the 1994 ACSP conference, “Global Approaches to North American Planning Education” (Dandekar 2009).…”

Educating Planners: Unified Diversity for Social Action

“…First, agreement has not been reached about the extent of &dquo;the problem&dquo; or the means of resolving it (Sanyal and Jammal 1992). Although this issue arose because of concerns about how useful U.S. planning education is for international students (Banerjee 1985;Heumann 1991;Niebanck 1988a,b), some empirical studies have suggested that a U.S. education is not a handicap, particularly in technical fields (Kihl 1990;Hinojosa et al 1992). Some advocate a universal approach to planning education, but others argue that only dualism will work, since the specifics of operating within Third World countries will always require something other than &dquo;globalism&dquo; (Burayidi 1993;Sanyal 1990, 8).…”