Planners as agents for the transition towards sustainable cities and regions – implications for future needs in expertise and education (PLANTS)

Climate change and environmental degradation are two of the most fundamental changes in our society.

In order to achieve the goal of zero net emissions of CO2 by 2045, fundamental societal changes are needed in our systems for transport, agriculture, the built environment and energy production and land-use. Such a transformative change requires effective local instruments and practices.

Urban and regional planning is one of the most effective local instruments for shaping the development and thereby creating a sustainable society, but the planning practices used today have few strategies and instruments for shaping, adapting and creating the sustainable societies of tomorrow.

The aim of this project is two-fold: (1) to trace and support emerging strategies and tools of transformative planning in the Swedish context, and (2) to integrate this knowledge in existing education programs for urban and regional planners.

In the project, an international qualitative analysis of planning practices with transformative elements will initially be conducted among cities and educations, and then practices and demanded knowledge among municipalities, regions and other planning organizations in Sweden will be studied.

The project group includes a total of five planner educations and the knowledge from the qualitative analysis will be integrated into educational elements within the educations. This new knowledge can contribute to an accelerated transformation of cities and regions.