Abstract
The pedagogy of urban planning education should include an understanding of the growth and complexity of city development issues, especially the best ways to respond to dealing with current and future challenges. At the same time, the nature of the city that urban planners engage with continues to change, with one major challenge being the increasing growth of informal settlements. This paper asserts that an essential component of contemporary urban planning pedagogy is the inclusion of international planning studios and, importantly, studios which focus on major urban social and civic planning issues, such as informal settlements. The latter have been acknowledged as a major sustainable development challenge and are incorporated into the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To support this assertion, the paper outlines the case for international planning studios, reviews the literature on studios—including planning and international studios—and discusses the benefits and challenges of organizing an international studio grounded on embracing global development issues and learning objectives. This paper uses a case study of an international postgraduate Master’s degree planning studio, set within an informal settlement (kampung) in Indonesia, held annually since 2015 to illustrate the above. The latter studio is in collaboration between the University of Sydney and the Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) University, Indonesia. The paper concludes with a summation for the case for international studios in contemporary urban planning pedagogy, including a set of principles that can be used by planning programs when designing an international planning studio.
Highlights
Education facilitates our ability to live, work, and learn effectively and ethically in an increasingly interconnected world [1]
The partner institution in the joint studio is Department of City and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, at the Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) University, Indonesia. The opportunity for both institutions to use a studio format and collaborate on the theme of informal urbanism evolved from a conference held in ITB in 2014, where academics from both institutions with similar interests in cross-cultural learning and informal settlements agreed to trial a studio based on understanding the dynamics of an urban kampung to postgraduate Masters students
The key proposition in this paper has been the extent to which urban planning programs effectively prepare future planners and urban designers with the critical thinking, skills, and knowledge required to engage with the varied complexities and contexts of the modern contemporary city by having international studios in their pedagogy
Summary
Education facilitates our ability to live, work, and learn effectively and ethically in an increasingly interconnected world [1]. The studio should embrace the diversity of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, their socio-cultural capital often underrecognized in its contribution to the learning process [1] Incorporating such approaches in studio design will enhance the student learning experience, workplace readiness, and the application of core planning competencies and skills in differing cities and sustainable development settings, all of which students will need when eventually working as professional urban planners, urban designers, and architects. Within this context, this paper seeks to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning in the domain of international planning studio pedagogy by advocating the benefits and challenges of undertaking a well-structured offshore planning studio. The narrative of the paper is articulated from the experiences of the Sydney University partner perspective and concludes with a set of principles that could be used by planning programs when creating an international studio as part of their program and curriculum strategy
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