- Planning education, certification and deregulation in Poland   click here to open paper content218 kb
by    Ledwon, Slawomir | slawomir.ledwon@gmail.com   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
The article describes the issues of planning education in Poland, how
reforms are made,what are the main obstacles to teach spatial planners and
what new skills are needed, as well as argues on the governmental plans to
deregulate planning profession in Poland.
Abstract
Two background factors are important to understand Polish the system
planning education. First one is the history of planning itself, and the
second one – the methods and focus on teaching urbanism so far. The recent
history of planning in Poland may be divided in to two main periods. After
Second World War planning was characterised by governmental regulation of
new development that was strictly connected with central policies of the
country in communist times. The breakthrough was marked by the system
transformation in 1989, when new opportunities for spatial development
quickly arose. It shifted the intention of planning laws form comprehensive
planning of the country to rather setting the grounds for specific
development. Since then the spatial growth was exposed to the pressure of
private needs and demands. As for the second one – teaching urbanism – it
refers to educating more often architects and urban designers rather than
spatial planners. And also the demand to teach more universal skills after
Polish planners were allowed to work internationally more easily.

The above two factors impacted the way that planners are taught in Poland
now and how they will have to be taught in the future. On the example of
Gdansk University of Technology the article argues what are the differences
in teaching architects to be urban designers compared to teaching spatial
planners, as well the changes implemented in curriculum at the national
level. Moreover nowadays students, that are in Poland traditionally used to
passive, professor led teaching of theory, have to become more actively
involved in the educational process. The article also describes the efforts
of newly formed Union of Spatial Management Schools to recognise by Polish
government the new field of studies – Spatial Management, as nowadays only
Architecture is formally established. It refers to the accreditation issues
that were also discussed in Europe by the Association of European Schools
of Planning – AESOP. On top of these issues, Polish government has recently
taken steps to deregulate planning profession in order to make these jobs
more available. Apart from discussing the above matters, the article argues
on questions on the future of planning education in Poland. These
experiences may serve as a reference for other countries that are in
transition or plan to reform their planning education systems.
Keywords
Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice
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