ABSTRACT
Planning educators orient students to a profession that is continually evolving in relation to technological change. In this chapter we examine five areas of innovation with technology for planning education. These innovation areas include: 1) expansion in the means of delivery and access to planning courses; 2) new means of organizing university-based learning and communication with technology; 3) the incorporation of planning support technologies (PST) in the classroom as both content and method for teaching new technical skills and reinforcing planning concepts. A fourth area of innovation includes the use of a growing number of data sources from open government portals, to social media and mobile technology for “crowdsensing” to the co-production of new sources of data through citizen science. A fifth area is a proposed focus in planning education on the creation and modification of new technological tools and critical thinking about the use and role of technology in planning practice. In conclusion, we propose two important continua for planning education and technology. The first is the scale of innovation from individual students and educators, to community partners and universities, to national and international planning organizations. The second continuum involves the level of student empowerment from knowledge of technology to the direct production of new technologies and methods.
