ABSTRACT
Scholars and practitioners universally cite several rationales for including history within the education of planners: to give students a sense of the roots of the profession; to document planners’ impacts on society; to exemplify the specifics of good planning; and to give students a sense of the dynamics of the urbanization process. But until recently, planning lacked its own discrete disciplinary traditions, its practitioners and education programs themselves aligned with architecture, landscape architecture, law, engineering, economics, and other social science fields. Though in some regions, planning remains a subdiscipline of architecture or engineering, thousands of planning programs are now operating globally, producing new generations of planners. In this context the matter of who teaches planning history and the role that it plays in the education of planners is important. What are the topics and texts that are used to impart a historical perspective on planning and development to future planners? Is planning history taught as a standalone course, or incorporated within a large frame of planning theory and practice, or covered in an introductory fashion in specific courses dealing with transportation, the environment, or community development? And how much of the vast outpouring of planning history scholarship over the past three decades has found its way into professional planning curricula? Or is that scholarship largely a pursuit of scholars practicing within their own disciplines (as distinguished from planning programs) to flesh out new themes that remain beyond the education of planning practice? And, finally, what are the expectations for planning educators to devote attention to history? These questions will be explored below, examining planning history scholarship and education, and drawing from a diverse array of global planning education examples.
