Planning education in a globalized world

Five aspects of planning education at the turn of the century are discussed in this comment on Leonie Sandercock's well argued paper. The dominance of English as lingua franca and the advance of the Anglo‐American approach to planning education in a globalizing world are seen as facts which give long standing regional traditions in other cultures little chance to transfer their experience and knowledge to the English speaking planning world. Despite global convergence in planning and planning education the adaptation to regional characteristics is still essential to move from knowledge to action in urban and regional development. Training students to develop creative competence is considered as a crucial and indispensable component in planning education. However, returning to physical planning and urban design as taught in many European schools, is considered to be deadly for the future of planning schools in Europe. This danger and the never‐ending departmental disputes among planners coming from different academic backgrounds about planning education makes planning educators the most dangerous enemies of forward looking planning education. This brief comment to Leonie Sandercock's inspiring paper is written with an optimistic outlook. The optimism is based on a scenario of two quite different concepts of planning education: a global, more theoretical concept aiming at advancing knowledge in the field, and a regional, more professional one which strives for better local and regional life spaces in a globalizing world, dominated by global markets and a global value system.