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Toward Greater Heights for Planning: Reconcilingthe Differences between Profession, Practice, andAcademic FieldDowell Myers & Tridib BanerjeePublished online: 26 Nov 2007.

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Toward Greater Heightsfor Planning

Reconciling the Differences between Profession,Practice, and Academic Field

Dowell Myers and Tridib Banerjee

These are extraordinary and somewhat perplexing times for the planningfield. At the same time that planning in the U.S. has captured wider andmore favorable public attention, it remains undervalued and even threat-

ened in a number of ways. Besieged by simultaneous euphoria and malaise, plan-ners’ discomfort and uncertainty about their professional identity has emerged ina number of ways. This essay addresses core questions that underlie the currentpredicament of the planning profession and field. Answers to these questions mayhelp to indicate the strategic directions we should pursue. Whereas some havedirected attention to how the academic programs might better serve the profession,another view is that the formal profession needs to expand to cover more of theexciting innovations emerging in the broader practice of urban problem solving.In essence, the challenge is to decide between two opposite strategic directions:Do we strengthen planning by retrenching and focusing on a single, well definedapplication area or by harnessing its potential to contribute to problem areas wherethere is such growing public interest?

We examine how academia and the profession can work together to strengthenand expand the planning domain. Working together, academia and the professionof planning will be better able to meet the challenges and opportunities we facetoday. Planning may indeed be poised for greater heights, but greater coordinationis needed if we are to master the escalating demands ahead.

Background to Current Concerns

The current growing public attention to urban planning issues is virtuallywithout precedence. Traditional concerns such as housing affordability, trafficcongestion, and environmental protection have been joined by mounting interestin smart growth, sprawl, livability, New Urbanism, growth visioning, sustain-ability, and regional collaboration. So strong is this popular movement that PaulFarmer, executive director of the American Planning Association (APA), has con-cluded “people are more concerned about planning issues today than at any timesince the s” (quoted in Myers, , p. ). Both the demand for planningservices and the number of new students have been rising markedly in recentyears, sharply different from the dismal outlook in the s (Krueckeberg, ;

This article addresses the current identitycrisis in the field of planning and offersa new vision of how it can be reconciled.Rather than retrench the profession andacademia to a single paradigm of plan-ning practice, we advocate expandingthe domain of planning to reflect therich variety of planning activities pursuedby practitioners today. Key distinctionsare proposed among three domains ofplanning—the organized profession,practice at large, and the academic field.Burgeoning activity within the realmof planning often occurs without theguidance of professional planners or aca-demics. Working together, and followingtheir distinctive missions, academia andthe profession can better address emergingopportunities.

Dowell Myers is professor and directorof the master of planning program inthe School of Policy, Planning, andDevelopment at the University ofSouthern California. He also serves onthe Governing Board of the Associationof Collegiate Schools of Planning and isan associate editor of the Journal. TridibBanerjee, FAICP, is the James IrvineChair of Urban and Regional Planningin the School and serves on the PlanningAccreditation Board.

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Longer View

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Myers, ). In part this is attributable to the issues justcited. However, at a global scale, rapid urbanization, oftenin megacities, has brought half of the world population intourban areas today, and this number will increase dramati-cally by the middle of this century. As cities around theworld experience explosive growth, the demand for plannersto manage and direct this growth will no doubt increase.Not only have the enrollment numbers risen substantiallyin planning schools located in the major metropolitanregions of the U.S., but the share of international studentsstudying planning in U.S. universities has also increased ata steady pace, pausing only after the events of /.

Despite this groundswell of growing demand, seem-ingly every other year another planning school is threat-ened with closure or merger. Also, the feeling expressed byprofessionals is that planning generally has not receivedthe media and public recognition deserved for its role inaddressing urgent planning problems. The planning effortto rebuild the World Trade Center complex in New York—a project that continues to attract global attention—isa case in point. While the architects, developers, Port Au-thority, and politicians are in the limelight, the plannersinvolved in the project, like good stagehands, remainbehind the wings and generally invisible. In a culture ofhero worshipping, the planner remains a stoic antihero.

The planning profession does not enjoy exclusiveownership of planning practice. Increasingly, architects,landscape architects, economists, engineers, lawyers, andcitizen activists all claim expertise in the domain of plan-ning and urban problem solving. Bruce McClendon (),immediate past president of the APA, finds a crisis ofconfidence for the planning profession, due in part to lackof self-awareness about the practitioners’ intrinsic core mis-sion, but due also to the heritage of the planning professionbeing encroached upon and co-opted by other professions.Perhaps in response to some of these frustrations, tensionshave erupted in the last two years in the relationship be-tween academia and profession regarding the accreditationof academic programs. In a recent proposal for revising theplanning accreditation document, a Task Force Groupappointed by the APA Division Council and the APABoard of Directors has proposed some significant changestoward redefining the contours of planning education.These changes include the knowledge, skills, and valuescomponents of the curriculum, and many are consistentwith the shifting directions in planning practice and trans-formations in the larger environmental context. Others aremeant to increase planning faculty’s connection to theprofession and to involve practitioners in the pedagogy ofplanning. Proposals to date have been a disjointed mix ofchanges in both input and output criteria. Clearly a more

strategic view is needed by both academics and practitioners.Many of the core themes in the relationship between

academia and the profession have never been properlyexamined. Indeed, we will argue that a much better align-ment of interests is desirable. The formal profession ofplanning is seemingly confined to only a portion of plan-ning practice, and, at the same time, the field of planningin academia is explicitly oriented to only a portion of boththe profession and the practice of planning. Current de-bates are causing planners in academia to reflect upon andarticulate their contributions to the field, profession, andpractice (Dalton, ; Myers, ; Pendall, ). At thesame time, the profession or practice of planning may beable to draw insights about its focus from the academicfield of planning.

Searching for a Core Identity

The irony is that at the very moment when societalproblems are coming to the fore about which plannershave key expertise, the role of planners is not well recog-nized nor widely validated. With so many rivals makingtheir own claims of mastery over the planning field, whatis it that truly distinguishes the planning profession and itsallied academic programs?

The planning field lacks clear boundaries and identity.In many practitioners’ eyes, the field is frankly too open,porous, and vaguely defined. Too many planning gradu-ates fail to join the American Planning Association. As astudy by Linda Dalton () has shown, many of themopt for other professional organizations, such as the UrbanLand Institute, American Institute of Architects, or theAmerican Society of Landscape Architects. Many of themmaintain joint membership in allied professions. Regret-tably, many planning graduates believe they have left theprofession entirely if they are not working on local land useplanning (Stiftel, ). Conversely, it is fair to ask howmany planning practitioners have formal training in plan-ning, or more specifically, a master’s degree in planning,and how many entry-level planners are hired withoutplanning degrees? For many years the ranks of newcomershave been replete with geographers, economists, architects,and engineers. Indeed, some of the newly popular areas ofplanning practice (to be described) are occupied by prac-titioners who are neither planning graduates nor membersof APA. As further evidence of porous boundaries, somein the professional community argue that too few facultymembers in planning programs have experience as plan-ning practitioners, have planning degrees, or have planningcredentials, and they see the accreditation process as a

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mechanism toward redeeming such deficiencies. That thebarriers to entry into planning—for faculty or practition-ers—are very low is not a problem for either the academyor the profession, as long as those engaged in planning jobscan be assimilated into a core professional culture.

Retrenchment or Expansion?

The instinctive response to this perceived problem ofa porous professional identity has been proposals for re-trenchment and restrictiveness. Professional certificationthrough the American Institute of Certified Planners(AICP) has defined the field more narrowly, focusing onspecific substantive aspects of planning at the local level.Recently, McClendon () emphatically urged the plan-ning profession to develop an even more sharply definedprofessional identity, with a boldly stated brand name, sothat the public would be better informed about the contri-butions of planners. By discovering what planners do best—comprehensive land use planning being his choice—and then promoting that product and service, he believesplanners can distinguish themselves from the various otheroccupational specialists who provide planning-relatedproducts and services. This emphasis on comprehensive,long-range planning seems, in some eyes, more a retreat tothe old and familiar. In the words of one commentary onthe McClendon article: “To me, identifying comprehen-sive land use planning as the heart of our matter is not abold vision; it’s where I started in planning in the s”(McCoy, , p. ). This is not to say that his proposalis without merit, but it may require embellishment andrepackaging to be made more attractive in current times.

Writing in a separate context, planning professor JudithInnes () strikes a similar theme, but with a postmodernspin. Rather than emphasize the formal document of thecomprehensive plan, she addresses comprehensivenessmore broadly: “We must build on what we do best andsystematically reinvent our field for the post-modern era.What we do best is make connections—among interests,public agencies, and professions and disciplines; betweenpublic and private sectors; and ultimately between gov-ernment and the public” (p. ). The new emphasis forplanners could feature a general comprehensive and inte-grative approach to addressing urban problems.

How Comprehensive isComprehensive Planning?

Does McClendon go far enough in his emphasis oncomprehensiveness? How does the comprehensive quality

of planning that is so valued begin to integrate all the spe-cializations planning graduates engage in? Urban design,transportation, housing, environmental planning, and localeconomic development are a few popular specializations.Are they subsumed or excluded by a focus on comprehen-sive land use planning? By itself, the comprehensive landuse plan may not offer sufficient scope to encompass allmajor planning activities.

Indeed, many of the most popular, rising aspects ofpublic awareness about the quality of environment invitean integrative and comprehensive approach. These emerg-ing issues exist apart from the traditional approach, andtheir popularity draws attention away from comprehensiveplanning. In some cities, citizens may even demand thatcomprehensive plans expand to include some of thesepopular notions. Nonetheless, practitioners and activistswho emphasize the emerging themes are also engaged inplanning practice, even if they do not call it that or con-sider themselves part of the formal profession of planning.Consider the following new themes that the planningprofession could expand to incorporate:

• Smart Growth. In many planners’ eyes, smart growthis no different from comprehensive land use planning.According to McClendon (), smart growth is “aby-product of comprehensive planning [and] a high-profile product that APA can use to ‘tell the planningstory’. . .” (p. ). Some would say that smart growthalso entails greater attention to infrastructure efficiency,transportation planning, housing affordability, andeconomic competitiveness than has been commonlyemphasized by comprehensive planners.

• Sustainable Planning. In the realm of urban andregional problem solving, the emerging notion ofsustainability is both comprehensive and long range(Berke, ). However, sustainability takes the no-tion of comprehensive planning three steps further.First, it emphasizes environmental protection and re-source conservation to a much greater extent; second,it adds new concerns for resource demands of con-sumer lifestyles; and third, it emphasizes longstandingplanning ideals of social equity that are not tradition-ally highlighted in comprehensive plans.

• New Urbanism. The most successful branding effortin the planning field has been the coining of “NewUrbanism” by a group of architect-town planners inthe mid s. While certainly not comprehensive—inthe sense that there is very little understanding of thesocial, economic, and political complexities of theurban context—New Urbanists have inspired andinjected a passion for good urban form that has been

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absent from the dialogue of the general planning proc-ess. In fact, APA has added a new division devoted tothis theme and is sponsoring workshops designed towork this into the profession.

• Livability. The least well defined of the new planningmovements entails our intuitions of urban livabilityor quality of life. Relying mainly on urban design,this emphasis on comprehensive urban experiencealso emphasizes the integration of private-sector retailentertainment, the arts, parks and open space, qualityof public life, and other such elements.

• Healthy Cities. The public health movement is an oldplanning partner from the early th century, one whosegoals of health and safety lent urgency and credibilityto planning efforts (Malizia, ). Recently, interesthas rekindled with regard to healthy city initiativesrelated to obesity and urban sprawl, or air pollutionand children’s respiratory disease, or with regard to thegeneral relationship between public health and the builtenvironment (see Lee & Vernez Moudon, ).

• Globalization and the Network Society: Increasinglyplanners are becoming aware of the effects of globali-zation on the economy of cities, and on the changingpopulation make-up of regions (via immigration). Inaddition, there is a growing awareness of the possiblestructural changes in the urban form brought aboutby the revolution in information and communicationtechnology. These forces from beyond municipalboundaries pose specific challenges for planning insuch areas as economic development, public involve-ment, neighborhood conservation, and urban designand redevelopment.

Can Planning Cover Everything?

Although it might be easy to conclude that the com-prehensive imperatives of planning dictate that all topicsshould be included, such a brash conclusion ignores anobvious threat. Ironically, the comprehensive scope ofplanning is both the field’s great strength and its point ofgreatest vulnerability. If planning really has such far flungapplications, how can the profession have any coherence?Some years ago, Aaron Wildavsky, the noted professor ofpublic policy, expressed similar doubts by proclaiming,“If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing” (Wildavsky,). And how is it possible for a relatively small field suchas ours to populate and defend such a vast terrain of prac-tice? Surely the academics and professionals must join to-gether if we are to exert leadership over so many planningapplications. More than the summation of different plan-ning topics is required. The field requires a more strategic

vision if we are to efficiently and productively structure ourefforts. Perhaps it is necessary to press for greater clarity,but if a narrow definition is not the answer, what is? Let usfirst address the uncertain linkages between field and pro-fession, and between academia and practice. Then we willturn to the question of mission and strategic focus forplanning, with an eye to both synergies and divisions oflabor between different sectors of the planning movement.

The Practice, Profession, and Fieldof Planning

One way of describing the parallel universes of theplanning profession and the academic schools of planningis to distinguish between the profession and the field ofplanning. We argue here that the two conceptions ofplanning deserve to remain distinct, but we also maintainthat a more deliberate consideration of the two may helpto build a stronger interaction and a productive reorien-tation of both academia and profession. First, we need tobetter grasp the distinctions between the broad practice ofplanning and the formal profession of planning. Then wemust address distinctions between the academic field ofplanning and the disciplines that contribute to it.

Profession and PracticeIn most professions, it is the practice that defines

professional competencies, ethos, and scope. This is truefor all major professions—engineering, law, medicine—and it is never the other way around. While the professionsmay have sectarian tendencies and defenses in the form ofmembership requirements, hierarchy, brand, loyalty, etc.,the nature of practice is more fluid, and opportunistic, anddefined by more contemporary challenges and rewards ofsolving social problems. As our lives become more global-ized and change comes faster, the nature of practice will nodoubt continue to evolve and change. There is a growingrecognition in many quarters that the solutions to complexsocial problems may lie in the interstices of the disciplines,and may require collaborative and multidisciplinary, if nottransdisciplinary and intersectoral (private, public, and vol-untary), approaches to problem solving. Any professionalstraightjacketing would be anachronistic and counterpro-ductive. Planning ideas and skills are expressed in practicefar beyond the boundaries of AICP or even APA, and todeny that will essentially leave the profession out of thenew challenges of urban problem solving, especially in suchareas as education, environment, public health, and com-munity safety—areas traditionally ignored by the planningprofession.

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The clear difference between profession and practiceshows up in Linda Dalton’s () recent analysis thatshows that less than half of the planning graduates holdtraditional planning jobs, i.e., “General Purpose Govern-ment,” but mainly in local governments. Instead, the ma-jority of these graduates work in other contexts such asspecific-purpose government, nonprofit, university, andprivate organizations, or in self-employed capacity. Giventhis reality, it may be advantageous for APA to considerthe broader limits of planning practice as demarcating thepotential boundaries of the planning profession withinwhich it has leadership. The range of activities performedby planners is stunning. We do not fault McClendon fornominating the comprehensive plan as the centerpiece ofthe planning profession; better that than what planners aremost widely known for—zoning. Nonetheless, this conveysan overly restricted notion of the field, because the compre-hensive plan is only one of a host of planning products andservices. Indeed, comprehensive plans for municipalitiesare undertaken only once in a decade or longer. On anannual basis, planners are engaged in such a broad arrayof activities: broad-scale coordination through regional orcomprehensive plans, master plans, capital improvementprograms, or visioning exercises; sectoral plans in housing,transportation, economic development, urban design, andmany more sectors; regulatory functions such as environ-mental impact review, zoning review, or fiscal impactassessment; analytical services such as growth projections,GIS, ad hoc problem investigations, or preparation ofwhite papers; advisement services such as pre-applicationconferences, “working the counter” with property owners,architects, and developers, or preparing memos and confer-encing with elected and appointed officials; and providingpublic education or taking client feedback such as issuingnewsletters, holding informative meetings, conductingcharrettes, and holding unofficial discussions by phoneor in person. Given this vast array, does the long-rangecomprehensive plan define the planners’ identity?

The Academic FieldA parallel distinction and set of potentialities also exists

in academia. A discipline is a scholarly branch of knowledgedefined by specific academic traditions, literature, methods,and paradigms. Boundaries of disciplines (biology, chemis-try, economics, physics, sociology, etc.) are usually unam-biguously circumscribed, and the autonomy of the disci-plines is zealously defended. The fields, on the other hand,are eclectic, integrative, and inclusive of different discipli-nary traditions and often closely related to practice andprofession. Thus, professions like business, education,engineering, law, medicine, management, or policy analysis

are all embedded in respective fields commonly acknowl-edged in academia. We submit that not only must planningbe considered such a field, but it is our sense that in thoseuniversities where planning programs have some stabilityand visibility, their legitimacy is increasingly derived fromthe broader academic recognition of planning as a field.While major professional schools—architecture, business,engineering, law, and medicine—may not need such recog-nition for their legitimacy, minor professions like planningincreasingly will have to rely on this identity. Fortunatelyfor planning, its field identity has deep roots, althoughacademic interests in the field are relatively more recent.

There are two main reasons for planning maturing asa field and for it receiving growing attention at the broaderacademic level. First, although the modern professionalembodiment of planning in the U.S. is relatively youngand has a history of only some plus years (see Birch,; Hall, ), the concept of planning as an essentialhuman activity—indeed an institution (see Banerjee, inpress)—involving design and organization of society andspace based on visions and reason has been long recognizedas an intellectual paradigm, and has been documented inthe scholarly annals of history, philosophy, cultural and po-litical theories, and the like. In recent years debates on mar-ket versus planning as the basis for efficient and equitableallocation of resources have captured the broader Americandilemma about communitarian versus libertarian values,and drawn from the interests of many traditional disciplines(see, e.g., Banerjee, ; Gordon & Richardson, ).

The second reason for growing recognition of theplanning field is that in the American academy, the uni-versities are increasingly accepting the challenge issued byour economic and political institutions to become moreengaged in solving the problems of the larger society. Inan urbanizing world, the urban context of the universitiesincreasingly has become the arena for academic engage-ment, whether it is a question of diversity or democracy,education or environment, globalization or growth, hungeror health, poverty or pollution. Indeed, the leading univer-sities in this country have always played an important rolein shaping the urban context. In a recent Wall Street Jour-nal op-ed piece, Lee C. Bollinger, the new president ofColumbia University, wrote:

Everything from the sewers (Charles FrederickChander), to the -avenue, -street grid system(Gouverneur Morris), to the subway (William BarclayParsons), to the parks and highways (Robert Moses),to the public school system (De Witt Clinton), toBroadway (Rodgers and Hammerstein), to Wall Street(Warren Buffet), to the Yankees (Lou Gehrig), to the

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mayor’s office (one-seventh have been Columbians)—every facet of the city has been created and shaped byColumbia faculty or graduates. (Bollinger, )

Today a growing movement among university presi-dents and provosts is leading them to embrace the idea thattheir universities should be engaged in problem solving forthe broader society and the state and local community. Theacademic planning programs are ideally positioned to leadtheir universities in this new venture—a major change fromthe dominant attitude of the post–World War II era—butto maintain academic credibility, that leadership still re-quires a careful balance between scholarship and profes-sional application. The standards of academic excellenceand that of promotion and tenure of planning professorsremain defined by the social science norms of scholarshipand publication. As Frederick Steiner (), dean of theschool of architecture at the University of Texas at Austin,correctly points out, increased research funding will beessential to the future survival of academic planning pro-grams, and, even though faculty desire to study planningproblems, the bulk of funding opportunities lie elsewhereand may serve to further distance these programs frompractice. These are institutional forces about which theindividual faculty or their programs have little control.In fact, in many of the leading planning programs, themajority of the faculty have not come with a Ph.D. or amaster’s degree in planning. In recruiting new faculty, theprograms have looked for academic and scholarly promiseand disciplinary backgrounds that represent the futureopportunities and challenges for planning, rather thantheir knowledge of comprehensive land use planning, ortheir ability to teach that core competency. Indeed, newplanning faculty have been motivated by the desire to studyurban problems without regard for institutional boundariesof problem solving agencies. That has led them to explorecutting-edge issues such as globalization and its effects oncommunities—something outside the province of mostlocal government agencies. Other such explorations aresustainability and healthy cities. This experimentation inacademia surely can benefit the profession as it seeks toexpand its domain.

Rethinking the Quandary

Distinguishing Field, Practice, andProfession

We would like to propose a different conceptualizationof the domain of planning—a conceptualization that is

designed for making the practice and pedagogy of planningmore resilient to the rapid and far-reaching changes of st-century globalization. We find that the practice of planningcovers a much larger domain than what is currently con-ceived by many in the APA/AICP professional community,or as articulated by McClendon. Further, we identify groupsof roles in the realm of planning that can be clearly distin-guished. We propose three distinct constructs that shouldhelp to resolve some of the current tensions: planning asa field, the practice of planning, and the profession ofplanning. The field of planning entails research and publicengagement, as well as instructional agendas. The fielddefined in academia offers the intellectual and scholarlylegitimacy to the practice and profession of planning; itestablishes the foundation of knowledge, and explores newfrontiers and engagement for the practice and profession.Planning faculty explore a great many cutting-edge topics,some of which may later become the subject of more insti-tutionalized, professional attention. The field is inherentlyeclectic and draws from other disciplines. Many social sci-ence faculty see planning as applied social science, and thesefaculty drawn from outside planning need to be inculcatedmore consciously into the culture of planning practice. Thespecifics of planning practice are so broad—as reflected inthe long list of planning products and services discussedabove—that it is difficult to single out specific practitionertopics for detailed instruction. Instead, the pedagogic strat-egy has commonly been to provide a general orientation tothe planning field, teach general skills useful in practice,

and provide some specialized training in one specific sectorwhere the student wants to specialize. To become an effec-tive professional planner, on-the-job training is needed thattargets the specific products and services offered by theindividual employer.

The practice of planning involves many different arenasthat engage many different types of practitioners—archi-tects, attorneys, engineers, landscape architects, etc.—andeven includes social or economic problems that lie beyondthe focus of most professional planners. Some planningleaders may wish to define the practice of planning strictlyin terms of comprehensive land use planning and expectthe programs to train students with that purpose in mind.Yet, as we know from the Dalton study, not all planninggraduates with a master’s degree, even if engaged in thepractice of planning—regional planning, internationaldevelopment, social policy, community and economicdevelopment, and so on—will focus within the subset ofpractice claimed as the core of planning. Indeed, manystudents are drawn to planning today not because of thelure of a career in comprehensive land use planning, butprecisely because of the larger and growing opportunities

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for societal problem solving that are also seen as an integralpart of planning.

The profession of planning offers institutional legitimacy,policy and legislative advocacy, quality control, ethical stan-dards, expertise, continuing education, and codification ofprofessional norms and standards. Under the leadership ofthe APA, the profession affords a central staging groundfor organizing practice and orienting the academic field,but does not necessarily define the limits of practice or ofthe academic field. In a way, both planning practice andthe academic field are more experimental and responsive tonew opportunities than the tenets of the formal profession,testing new ways in which planning can be effective. In-deed, the profession has a duty to take advantage of theseexperimentations, staying abreast of innovations and even-tually incorporating successes into the domain of the for-mal profession. Only by such expansion can the professionenhance its leadership potential for advancing the planningmovement in America. For its part, academia needs toassume more participation within the domain of practice,and specifically within the profession, so that the unitedstrengths of planning can be harnessed more effectively.The current tensions between academia and the professionmay be largely a function of a limited, older view of thecore of planning as defined by some leaders in the pro-fession. Instead, the profession should embrace the largerdomain of the practice of planning, where a large portionof planning graduates typically work, and the professionshould welcome the academic research and explorations ofemerging planning problems not yet ripe for formal inclu-sion in the profession. Once the APA/AICP leadership em-braces the larger domain of planning practice and the fieldof planning as defined by academia, the current conflictshould subside. At the same time, for its part, the academicplanning field needs to exhibit greater consciousness of theprofessional identity that distinguishes the field from thesocial science disciplines that often supply its faculty. Cer-tain, distinctive ways of approaching problems are commonto planners in academia, practice, and the profession, andthese deserve to he highlighted more consciously if we areto build a strengthened domain of planning.

The Core Mission for Academia and theProfession of Planning

We seek not only commonalities binding academia,practice, and the profession, but also the appropriatedivision of labor and mutual support among the majorplanning institutions. How do we focus our efforts? Inessence, we must discover the mission for planning, oneshared yet distinguished between academia and profession.We cannot claim to satisfy that quest here, but offer some

suggestions that may help clarify differences and common-alities. What makes the planning field or practice unique?One resource cited by McClendon () is the “anchorpoints for planning identification” proposed by the Strate-gic Marketing Committee of the Association of CollegiateSchools of Planning (ACSP; Myers, ). Rather thandemarcate the boundaries of planning, the committee iden-tified key themes or foci that underlie and bind together awide variety of planning-related activities. Any one of thefoci is insufficient to uniquely identify work as “planning”;rather, a combination of two or three of the foci may berequired. The six anchor points were identified as a focuson human settlements, emphasis on comprehensive inter-connections, a focus on the future and pathways of changeover time (Myers & Kitsuse, ), emphasis on equityand diversity of needs, emphasis on open and collaborativedecision making, and linking knowledge and collectiveaction (Myers, ).

Applying these generic foci, McClendon () sug-gested that the planning profession’s vision and core missionshould be “the production, administration, and implemen-tation of comprehensive plans” (p. ), and he emphasizedthat his proposal calls on the anchor themes of comprehen-sive interconnections in human settlements. Nonetheless,this proposed mission centers on a single (albeit major)product and paradigm of planning among the many prod-ucts and paradigms that comprise the domain of practice(see above). As an alternative mission for the profession thatis broader yet still focused, we might propose that plannersdesign solutions, forge agreements about urban futures, andinspire collective visions for a good and just society. A com-prehensive plan is one manifestation of this mission, as aremost of the sectoral plans, technical services, negotiations,and public communications in which planners are engaged.This mission statement emphasizes that the profession iscentral in coordinating among different actors (publicsector, business, citizens, and other professionals), and thatthe resulting agreements are explicitly future oriented andintend to make communities better. It also holds out thepromise that the profession not only facilitates but con-structs positive solutions. A broad activist role in makingbetter urban futures could prove to have more compellingappeal to the public than merely handling comprehensiveplans. As we view it, no single mission statement is clearlypromoted by the organized planning leadership (APA andAICP) for the profession. The statements offered suggestthat planners solve community problems and meet societalneeds. We doubt that these generalities highlight the uniqueprofessional focus of planning or its inspiring ethical andsocial goals. This oversight needs more attention. For theacademics, someone might propose a mission such as we

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train the next generation of planning practitioners, exceptthat such a statement is far too narrow. Teaching is onlya portion of the academic job, and a mission restricted toteaching discounts the major, highly visible contributionsof the academic field through research and publication.Equally misguided would be the overly general missionwe pursue excellence in scholarship. Perhaps a broader butdistinctive mission for the academic field should read weadvance knowledge and seek solutions to urban problems.Knowledge is advanced by teaching students, through aca-demic research, and through public education. Academicstypically do not engage in the kind of interactions thatpractitioners have within a real-world context. Insteadtheir contributions involve scholarly research, knowledgeproduction, and problem exploration.

Conclusion

The planning profession faces an identity crisis, notsomething unheard of in the history of our field. BruceMcClendon has suggested a marketing approach andadvocated the need for an appropriate “brand” identity,recommending “comprehensive land use planning” asthe appropriate brand. But this makes choices rather stark:Should we retrench to a more narrowly defined conceptionof what is urban planning, or should we expand the domainof planning to claim all the new planning-related innova-tions in practice that are now raising the public profile ofthe field? The first option assumes that there is one dom-inant paradigm or activity of planning. Yet, as we haveargued, the domain of planning practice is defined bymultiple and evolving paradigms of planning that reflectdifferent scales, institutional contexts, and substantivedirections. Moreover, to hunker down on comprehensiveplanning is to ignore the bread-and-butter activities ofplanning practice and to forego claims to the exciting newmovements related to planning, including sustainability,public health, and globalization. Worse, if we restrict theprofessional identity too narrowly, we will lose even moreof our planning graduates as they move between jobs thatapply their planning skills in different ways. We want themto retain their identity as planners for life (Stiftel, ).

Planning education faces a particular challenge andopportunity. Prodded by the practitioners, academia mayneed to reform its s-era curriculum, which is heavilysocial science based. But those changes, in turn, should notreflect s-era conceptions of the profession. Nor shouldthe academics be expected to focus on details of the newestwrinkle in planning practice. (Should visioning and NewUrbanism be made the core of planning education?) Rather,

the academics should emphasize the fundamental, genericskills that are distinctive to planning. If planners facilitatecivic engagement and collaboration of stakeholders, then ac-ademics should teach basics of negotiation and communi-cative action. If planners design solutions, then academicsshould emphasize problem diagnosis and solution design.If planners shape better urban futures, then academics shouldteach something about the future and processes for agree-ing on what is better. If the careers of future planners willinvolve many different paradigms of practice—some stillunknown—academics should train students with the skillsand knowledge that will prepare them for such contingencies.

Are academic and professional planners prepared toassume responsibility for redesigning planning for the stcentury? We propose that in order to take planning to greaterheights, we must reconcile the chasm between academiaand the profession by working together. First, we mustrecognize the division of labor among key sectors in plan-ning: the academic field, the profession, and the practice.Academics can explore problem areas not yet codified intoprofessional practice, and they can bolster the reputationand standing of the profession through their publicationsand interactions with other academic fields. The context ofplanning—the world around us—is changing rapidly anddramatically with globalization, information technologyrevolution, the emergence of a new economic order, andthe new prevalence of cooperation between governmententities and among public, private, and nonprofit sectors.The profession must have a forward-looking position thatanticipates this rapidly evolving future, prepares itself forfuture opportunities and challenges, and remains intel-lectually nimble enough to adapt to new professional andpedagogic challenges. Working together, academia and theprofession can achieve greater recognition for planning, withstudents better trained, and with more strongly articulatedprofessional claims. In the practice of planning, we wouldlead local efforts to solve urban problems, lead the newdialogue about growth visions and futures, lead the build-ing of collaborative partnerships, lead the partnershipsfostering a new regionalism, lead international efforts formanaging urban growth and development planning, andlead the campaign for urban sustainability, among others.In turn, in academia, planning departments may be betterable to lead the new trend toward university/communitypartnerships for urban problem solving and lead the newacademic trend toward trans- and multidisciplinary prob-lem solving. The planners in academia need to work withthose in practice to better articulate the special skills andapplications that jointly distinguish the planning field andprofession. Recent debates and growing opportunities arespurring us forward. Indeed, the time is ripe for achieving

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greater heights for all of planning. The town and gowndivide has to be bridged to reach that goal.

AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank the many practitioners and academicswho have spurred our thinking through numerous conversations. Inaddition, helpful comments on drafts of the article were provided by UriAvin, Linda Dalton, Elizabeth Gearin, Lewis Hopkins, Judith Innes,Sumner Sharpe, Bruce Stiftel, and the editor and two anonymousreviewers.

Notes. Some of the leading planners involved are Robert Yaro of the Re-gional Plan Association of New York; Alex Garvin of the New YorkCity Planning Department; Gary Hack, the dean of the University ofPennsylvania School of Design and the principal urban designer for thewinning design of Daniel Liebskind; and Edward Blakely, then dean ofthe Milano School in the New School University in New York City.Although not in the public eye, the leadership of Yaro in particular isprominent in Goldberger ().. Writing is the skill repeatedly cited at the top of the list in surveys ofplanning practitioners or their employers (Guzzetta & Bollens, ).. The following expressions are the most prominent on the APA website: “APA and its professional institute, the American Institute ofCertified Planners, advance the art and science of planning to meet theneeds of people and society” (APA, ). Or, “Certified planners areskilled at finding solutions to current community problems in ways thatwill carry a community toward long-term goals” (APA, ). Moresimply, APA brings together people “. . . committed to making greatcommunities happen” (APA, ). For the most part, these are fairlygeneral statements that do not highlight the unique contributions ofplanning—is a community focus sufficient?—although the mission ofthe certified planners is distinctive in emphasizing “long-term goals.”

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