Planning as Critical Engaged Practice: Consequences for Studio Education.

Space, people, and time are all intertwined in the city, a complex system in which planners intervene. Their strategic plans and neighbourhood designs impact the daily lives of city dwellers. This emphasises the point that spatial planning and urban design ar enot technical disciplines. The everyday use of space and its symbolic meanings must be incorporated. Planning as an engaged practice involves explicit engagement with the Habitat III goals and, more specifically, the New Urban Agenda (NUA) goals. This commitment to sustainable urban development means we are working to create integrated and just societies for the future. The NUA paved the way for the right to the city to be incorporated into planning. This chapter discusses incorporating both aspects (socio-spatial complexity and the right to the city) into planning education, specifically the design studio. It begins by questioning the design studio’s current functioning. It then shows a resurrected studio setting, where socio-spatial complexity and the right to the city can be gradually integrated meaning that the studio will no longer be about what is, but about what is ‘yet to be’.