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 evidence has been put forward to test their assertions. A survey of graduates of accredited planning programs working overseas indicates that these practitioners see themselves as successful, and report that their education played a key role in that success. Moreover, they report having less difficulty adapting what they have learned to other contexts than is generally thought. The authors suggest that a key to educating international as well as domestic students is to focus on ways of translating the theoretical and abstract into solutions applicable to real world situations.