Michael Hooper

This course undertakes a detailed, comparative examination of the history, and possible futures of, planning in a global context. It examines planning in diverse settings and highlights the ways in which planning has been and might be conceived and practiced across the Global North and South. It seeks to introduce students to the wide variety of planning paradigms, approaches and techniques that have been deployed by planners and other actors who create and are affected by plans. The course highlights the differences and similarities in the way planning has been conceived and undertaken across geographies. It pays particular attention to the debates, trade-offs, compromises and tensions that have dominated the way planners have approached their work and how they conceptualize and plan for the future. Rather than focusing on descriptions of key events or people (although those are covered too), the course is structured around a number of important analytic themes that can help students understand the work of planners across a wide range of temporal, geographic, political, economic and cultural settings.

This course undertakes an examination of planning theory, with a particular focus on values and ethics, and explores the role of these topics in planning practice and in policymaking more broadly. It builds on the foundation established in Plan 500, which focused on the history of planning and on the theories and ideas that have animated planning, as undertaken by diverse actors, over the long term. In this course, we will pay particular attention to the important values-oriented and ethical questions that planners are likely to face in their work and which are also at the centre of much scholarly work on planning. Since planning as a profession and a field of intellectual inquiry is rich in theories, we will narrow our focus on a subset of themes and questions that are likely to play an important role in students’ lives as they go on to work in planning and which can provide useful lenses for guiding decision making and action. In short, the course will seek to be as applied as a theory course can be. The course will involve extensive in-class discussion, applied case exercises and site visits.