Values and the planning school

Abstract

This paper discusses the nature of the contemporary planning school in the global ‘North’. It argues that every education, including planning education, inculcates values; a necessary condition for doing this rigorously in planning is to have a school which coheres around a set of values about planning (and hence around an understanding of the social world of which it is a part); trends in higher education make meeting this necessary condition increasingly difficult. This paper illustrates the approach it advocates with examples from university education within and outside planning schools.