A vexed terrain: exploring assumptions and preconceptions around planning education in universities

摘要: In the course of its ongoing development, planning in Australia, as elsewhere in the world, has undergone an increasing ;process of professionalisation. Like medicine, law, engineering or accounting it has its own formal qualifications, based upon education and examinations, and its own regulatory bodies with powers to admit and discipline members. The paper begins by exploring a growing awareness of the notion of 'diverse communities', both in terms of the communities that the planning professionals serve, and the way in which the planning profession itself is increasingly being made up of diverse communities of planning specialists. Drawing, along with a range of other documentary sources, on a series of inquiries conducted over the last decade and inquiring into planning education and employment (NSW Department of Planning 2006; Planning Institute of Australia 2004; Ourran et al. 2008), the paper explores some of the key debates andlor tensions which have emerged repeatedly within these documents concerning the type of education that planning programs within universities are expected, assumed or perceived to play in the provision of planning education to the growing diversity of specialist communities of interest that make up the Australian planning profession (Ourran et al. 2008 p4).