A Sustainability Agenda in Planning Education

Over the last two decades land use planning in Australia has openly embraced sustainability as a principal tenant. However the core of land use planning has traditionally been the management and construction of urban environments. Land use planning in rural and regional Australia has increasingly had to confront a broadening natural resource management agenda and an environmental planning imperative. This has resulted in a paradigm shift for land use planners from being expected to facilitate development to placing proposals within the context of the sustainability of the resource base. The effect has been to widen the scope for professional practice. Planning education is increasingly filled with competing interests reflecting the growing complexity of built and natural environments. The need for planning to articulate around development, natural resource management and sustainability offers a real opportunity to develop a clear social sciences agenda for sustainability at a secondary and tertiary level. This chapter explores a sustainability agenda as a critical component of planning practice, it utilises two case studies and the response of planning education to this agenda.