Planning education has traditionally been the responsibility of universities for the fundamentals and the American Planning Association for professional certification and continuing education. There are many opportunities for both universities and the APA to educate non-planners and planners about planning issues. I believe the APA has made giant strides to fill in the gaps with real world knowledge and case studies. A large organization, though, suffers from the flexibility to quickly turn knowledge into a commodity that can be digested and put to the test. Swiftness to disseminate tutorials and hands-on training are required to keep up with the changing technology landscape. There are currently few educational providers of courses on skill development as it directly applies to planning.
Planning school today doesn’t adequately prepare a planner to utilize web based technology. This is largely because the web is a dynamic entity and new technologies are almost impossible to keep up with. It takes years to design a course and get it approved for integration into the curriculum. A latency period is created between what is approved to be taught and what exists to be utilized.
The perception of the recent planning graduate is that they are “up on the latest technology.” A planning principal looks to a recent graduate to demystify web based mapping technology. Senior planners look to recent graduates to post plans online and manage community feedback. These aren’t things that are taught in school. In order for the young professional to meet the demands of the planning practice while using technology to raise the profession’s baseline, proper support needs to be in place. An “On Demand” continuing education support system that will get them up to speed through interactive tutorials and webinars. They need someone who will filter all the available information out there into bite sized chunks that can live on their desktops. What is required are skills relevant to the work they are doing without spending hours (and years) learning web design, web development, or special programming languages to achieve measurable results.
I have been amazed at how seemingly slow the profession of planning has been to adopt and integrate technology into the workflow. Things like online content management and document collaboration have been utilized by other professions for nearly a decade while planning professionals remain tied to their applications running locally on their computers. Did you know we can avoid this scenario, “ Oh, let me email that to you, you make changes, then email it on to Sally. I’ll keep the original here so we can refer back to it later.”? Why don’t planners use more of what is available? Is this because planners don’t know how to access such tools? Is it because they are too expensive for planners? Perhaps because planners don’t know they exist or how to get them setup? From my experience, planners find it useful but don’t understand how these tools add value to planning services. Usefulness alone will not change a mindset or inspire planners to adopt new ways of servicing communities.
