- Building Sustainable Cities – Challenges for professional education    86 kb by    Lorens, Piotr | plorens@pg.gda.pl    Short Outline The sustainable development paradigm requires planners to obtain new professional skills. In result the traditional planning curriculum reformed and new forms of education should be introduced. Abstract The new sustainable urban development paradigm involves many different aspects. One of them is planning, including the aspects of urban design as well as of making formal planning regulations. Many of these tasks are frequently performed in a way known for many decades by now. But the new paradigm, although perceived differently in various countries, require new planning approaches. Surprisingly, changes in this matter are much more frequently demanded by socially and politically conscious local communities then professionals. This in many cases comes out from the traditional planning education and belief that once earned knowledge and abilities are still a solid base for contemporary tasks. But in the realities of globalized world, increasing mobility of professionals and – at the same time – still lasting differences between developing and developed countries the planning profession requires constant updates and adaptation to the new situations. Therefore, planners need to gain new skills and abilities, associated with all three elements of the new planning paradigm: the sustainable urban form; the efficient way of making development happen; and the proper involvement of the public into the decision – making process. In order to allow this, the new forms of education have to be introduced. Also the traditional approaches to planning education in schools of planning and architecture have to be modified as the equal importance should be given to all three elements of the new planning paradigm. The paper will present some of the possible solutions to this problem, including recent experiences from Poland. Both formal and informal educational initiatives will be discussed, including undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate and doctoral programs. Keywords new planning paradigm, education Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper