Leadership in Engineering

Tuning land use and transport is not only relevant for each of these policy fields; it has a major impact on the regional economy and the environment, too. Yet, again and again, the collaboration between land use planners and transport engineers proves to be problematic. Apart from institutional barriers and diverging interests, the focus of both engineers and planners appears to be very different. Engineers and planners seem to be driven by different forces. Their professional languages, technologies and frameworks hamper communication and collaboration. This abstract explores the characteristics of this diversion, and explores an approach towards an improved collaboration. Concepts from education sciences, cognitive psychology, organizational learning and systems theory are used. This abstract suggests that the education of both professions needs reframing. Land use planners are now taught to solve planning problems, just as transport engineers are taught to solve transport problems. But, society needs planners as well as engineers to solve societal problems. Teaching leadership might be a proper answer to this challenge.