This article analyzes the results of a survey of planning theory course outlines conducted in 2020 parallel to four similar surveys that together provide a forty-year review of a central component of planning education. The article begins by briefly reviewing the major trends in planning theory over the past forty years. It then examines the course topics and required readings, authors, and texts for sixty-two master’s-level courses offered during the 2019–2020 academic years. The article concludes by evaluating the survey findings and the picture they paint of contemporary planning theory education.
AltshulerAlan. 1965. “The Goals of Comprehensive Planning.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners31 (3): 186–95.
2.
American Institute of Certified Planners. 2005. AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Chicago: American Institute of Certified Planners.
3.
ArnsteinS. R.1969. “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Institute of Planning35:387–94.
4.
BaumH. S.1996. “Why the Rational Paradigm Persists: Tales from the Field.” Journal of Planning Education and Research15:127–35.
5.
BeauregardRobert A.1995. “Edge Critics.” Journal of Planning Education and Research14:163–66.
6.
BeauregardRobert A.2018. Cities in the Urban Age: A Dissent. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
7.
BolanR. S.1981. “Do Planning Theory Courses Teach Planning?” Journal of Planning Education and Research1 (1): 12–16.
8.
BolukbasiT.ChangK. W.ZouJ. Y.SaligramaV.KalaiA. T.2016. “Man Is to Computer Programmer as Woman Is to Homemaker? Debiasing Word Embeddings.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems29:4349–57.
9.
BrooksM. P.2002. Planning Theory for Practitioners. Chicago: Planners Press.
10.
CampbellScottFainsteinSusan S.2003. Readings in Planning Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
DaltonL. C.1986. “Why the Rational Paradigm Persists: The Resistance of Professional Education and Practice to Alternative Forms of Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research5:147–53.
13.
DavidoffP.1965. “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners31:331–38.
14.
FainsteinSusan S.DeFilippisJames, eds. 2015. Readings in Planning Theory. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
15.
FaludiAndreas. 1973. A Reader in Planning Theory. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier Science & Technology Books.
16.
FangLiEwingReid. 2020. “Tracking Our Footsteps.” Journal of the American Planning Association86:470–80.
17.
FoglesongRichard E.1986. Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Era to the 1920s. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
18.
ForsythAnn. 2021. “Theories and Planning Theories.” Journal of the American Planning Association87 (2): 155–58.
19.
FrankAndrea I.SilverChristopher, eds. 2018. Urban Planning Education: Beginnings, Global Movement and Future Prospects. 1st ed. New York: Springer.
20.
FriedmannJ.1995. “Teaching Planning Theory.” Journal of Planning Education and Research14:156–62.
21.
GoldsteinHarveyMaierGunther. 2010. “The Use and Valuation of Journals in Planning Scholarship: Peer Assessment versus Impact Factors.” Journal of Planning Education and Research30:66–75.
22.
HallPeter. 2014. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design since 1880. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
23.
HemmensG.1980. “New Directions in Planning Theory.” Journal of the American Planning Association46:259–60.
24.
HightowerH. C.1969. “Planning Theory in Contemporary Planning Education.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners35:326–29.
25.
JacobsJ.1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
26.
KlostermanR. E.1981. “Contemporary Planning Theory Education: Results of a Course Survey.” Journal of Planning Education and Research1 (1): 1–11.
27.
KlostermanR. E.1985. “Arguments for and Against Planning.” The Town Planning Review56 (1): 5–20.
28.
KlostermanR. E.1991. “Planning Theory Education in the 1980s: Results of a Second Course Survey.” Journal of Planning Education and Research11:130–40.
29.
KlostermanR. E.2001. Planning Theory Education in the 1990s: Results of a Course Survey. Atlanta, GA: Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.
30.
KlostermanR. E.2011. “Planning Theory Education: A Thirty-Year Review.” Journal of Planning Education and Research31 (3): 319–31.
31.
LindblomC. E.1959. “The Science of ‘Muddling Through.’” Public Administration Review19:79–88.
32.
MeyersonM.1956. “Building the Middle-Range Bridge for Comprehensive Planning.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners22:58–64.
33.
MiraftabF.2009. “Insurgent Planning: Situating Radical Planning in the Global South.” Planning Theory8 (1): 32–50.
RittelHorst W. J.WebberMelvin M.1973. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences4 (2): 155–69.
36.
RothsteinR.2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing.
37.
RoyAnanya. 2005. “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association71 (2): 147–58.
38.
SanchezThomas W.2020. “The Most Frequently Cited Topics in Urban Planning Scholarship.” Urban Science4 (1): 4.
39.
SanchezThomas W.AfzalanNader. 2015. Mapping the Knowledge Domain of Urban Planning. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2564185. Rochester: Social Science Research Network.
40.
SchönDonald A.1987. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
41.
ShafirEldarLeBoeufRobyn A.2002. “Rationality.” Annual Review of Psychology53 (1): 491–517.
42.
TeitzMichael B.1996. “American Planning in the 1990s: Evolution, Debate and Challenge.” Urban Studies33 (4–5): 649–71.
43.
TeitzMichael B.2019. “Beauregard: Cities in the Urban Age: A Dissent.” Journal of the American Planning Association85 (3): 381–82.
44.
WatsonVanessa. 2009. “Seeing From the South: Refocusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s Central Urban Issues.” Urban Studies46 (11): 2259–75.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
