Changing Our Scale of Thinking: Value of a Megaregional Planning Course

Abstract

A perpetual debate exists among planning educators concerning the balance between practice and theory (Seltzer and Ozawa 2002; Baum 1997; Friedmann 1996). What set of topics, readings, and skill sets are needed to respond to what today’s employers expect from entry level planners, and to position students to effectively work with diverse groups and institutional frameworks (Sletto 2010; Guhathakurta 1999; Niebanck 1999)? Just as important is the need for planning education to produce graduates capable of working regionally and globally. Many planning programs draw their strength from strong relationships with allied disciplines like engineering, public policy, architecture, geography, sociology, and law. However, many programs fall short in applying theory and practice to the regional and global scale (Pezzoli and Howe 2001). Over the years, American cities and metropolitan areas have experienced a rise in economic and social inequalities, depletion of natural resources, and heightened economic dependence on the global market. Given these changes, there is a need to change our scale of thinking to strategically and effectively cross geopolitical boundaries, including municipalities, states, and countries (Contant and Leone de Nie 2009). This paper reports on a new course, Planning for Megaregions (PMR), in the School of Architecture Community and Regional Planning Program (CRP) at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) that presents this larger scale of thinking to students. We focus on our innovative structure used in class to link education, practice, and research. Like planning programs that offer specializations in the integration of land use and transportation (Krizek and Livinson 2005), we focus on the cross-boundary connections between governance, energy, water, social equity, health, housing, land use, and transportation, with an emphasis on freight and rail. Our research reveals that beyond noted planning studios that organized during the early explorations of defining the geographic demarcations of megaregions, the authors found no planning or civil engineering schools that have since incorporated a course geared toward a megaregional analysis level. In this paper, we begin with a historical overview of the term megaregion, and then proceed to the development of studying megaregions at UT-Austin. The paper then gives a description of the innovative tools designed by the instructors to link research to education and practice to education. We conclude with two anonymous student evaluations and two students who intentionally desired to share their thoughts on the course’s success of linking education to practice and research.