FROM A MINOR TO A MAJOR PROFESSION: CAN PLANNING AND PLANNING THEORY MEET THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALISATION?

I am deeply honoured by the invitation to share with you some thoughts on a double occasion: AESOP’s 30th anniversary, and the launching of its open-access e-journal. Both these occasions represent important milestones towards the future of the planning profession globally. To reveal why this is not an exaggeration, I will take the readers on a journey across time and continents, to encounter the story of the evolution of planning as a discipline and a profession. The journey will also expose challenges facing planning theory.

I am deeply honoured by the invitation to share with you some thoughts on a double occasion: AESOP's 30 th anniversary, and the launching of its open-access e-journal.Both these occasions represent important milestones towards the future of the planning profession globally.To reveal why this is not an exaggeration, I will take the readers on a journey across time and continents, to encounter the story of the evolution of planning as a discipline and a profession.The journey will also expose challenges facing planning theory.

Can Planning Become the Lead Profession to Meet the Global Urban Challenges?
The years 2016-2017 have opened up a dream-world set of opportunities for the planning profession.To what extent are planning education and the global planning profession intrinsically ready to take up these opportunities, and are there prices to be paid?

Urban Issues Come to the Global Forefront
In October 2016, Habitat III held hundreds of meetings, conferences and events.It became a never-before celebration of the importance of urbanity -the hubs of the world's economies, social dynamics, cultural and scientific innovations.At this event, 167 nations from around the world signed the United Nations New Urban Agenda document (demonstrating at least a symbolic commitment, as it should be noted that although the Agenda is under the umbrella of the United Nations, it is not legally binding).In 2017, the details of the Agenda are being elaborated.The hundreds of fora devoted to the many aspects of urban life also laid bare the enormous challenges facing decision makers, professionals, and civil-society activists in attempting to steer the world's cities away from their seemingly intractable problems, such as vast numbers of people living in slums and deprivation; huge infrastructure deficiencies; and unhealthy environments -all intensifying daily.Can a more just and flourishing future be achieved?
To fulfil the goals of the New Urban Agenda even partially, there will be a need for many more urban professionals around the world.Which one of the several professions relevant to urban policy will take the lead in meeting these challenges?Does planning -as a discipline and a profession -have the momentum for the task?Where there are not enough planners, or where planning has not yet matured as a profession, architects or civil engineers might make a "comeback", and be viewed again as the prime urban experts, thus resuming their past role before the emergence of planning education.This would be an unfortunate reversion to the days of failed physical determinism in city-making.Will other disciplines with only sectoral knowledge of urban affairs, such as geography, economics, or policy analysis, take the lead?
In order to meet the global urban challenges, both in quantity and quality, planning needs to meet two conditions: first, planning should fortify its professional core.Secondly, planning must become more global in its reach and body of knowledge.After all, urban issues today are not only local, but also global.Planning must evolve from a historically locally-grounded profession, to one that is capable of synthesising local knowledge with global transferability.The term "glocal", coined by Roland Robinson (1992), fits this challenge well.

Can Planning Meet the Professional Challenge?
Will planning succeed in becoming the urban profession?Does the planning discipline and profession have the internal makeup for this mission.
On the positive side, no other single profession is a better fit in meeting John Friedmann's call -"from knowledge to action" (Friedmann, 1974;1987).Planners are the custodians of the most comprehensive and integrative knowledge about the various facets of how cities work.No other profession is more qualified to understand the complex interrelationships that cities embody -between societies, cultures, economies, politics, the physical and biological world, and technologies, all at once.Planners understand these interrelationships -not just in abstract theory or philosophy, but literally -"on the ground".Our interest in urban issues is unbounded.Like medical doctors, and unlike architects, for example, we are fascinated by every part of the body and physiology of cities, not only their healthy and beautiful parts.Planners are eager to cure or at least improve lives in areas of decline or endemic poverty.
We have a profession which uniquely stands on two quite different pillars: substantive knowledge about cities and spatial relations; and expert knowledge about public policymaking, how it works, and how to design policies that governments are likely to adopt.We are the only profession created in order to bridge these two very different pillars of knowledge.So, on its face, in a world where the majority of humanity is already living in cities, planning should be the profession to lead public policymakers in meeting the urban challenges.But, in order to become the major urban profession, planning will need to strengthen its professional identity, which is currently replete with ambivalence.Planning theorists should address these difficult conceptual challenges.I will end this paper with a few thoughts in this direction.
I turn now to asking, what makes a profession?Next, the paper will survey the internationalisation of planning education and the profession.I will point out the deep distinction between the steep increase in the number of planning schools across the world, and the challenge of true globalisation and glocalisation of knowledge.
Here, AESOP's essential role will become apparent.

What Makes a Profession?
2.1.Major and Minor Professions Donald Schön, the eminent American scholar of organisational learning and a planning educator, classified planning as one of the "minor professions" (Schön, 1984; see also Glazer, 1974).He distinguished planning from the older, well-established "major professions", such as medicine, architecture, engineering, or law.By the term "minor", Schön meant that planning, like some other emerging professions, exhibits only some of the characteristics of the major professions, or that some of these traits are still in an embryonic stage.As a person trained in a "major profession" (law) in addition to planning, I can keenly sense the differences.
To what extent does Schön's classification of planning as a minor profession still hold today?The answer differs across countries or regions.In most, planning is still far from achieving the status of a major profession.In order to be at the lead of global urban policy, the professional planning organisations, along with planning educators and scholars, should consider whether it is feasible for planning to become a major profession and, if so, whether there are prices to be paid.
There is a large academic body of knowledge about the sociology of professions: a basic text is Abbott (1988); an example of recent controversies is the edited volume by Young and Muller (2014).Rather than delving into the various debates, I will draw on my own experience in helping to build a country's planning profession "from scratch" in Israel, and on my observation of the evolution of planning education and the planning profession in some other countries.This observation is possible due to the relatively young age of planning education and the profession and its initially limited global spread.So, in a single life's academic career (mine is by no means over), it has been possible to become a participant-observer of major global milestones.

Criteria for Becoming a Profession
Based on my experience, I distinguish professions from other types of work-related endeavours along two dimensions: from purely technical or administrative vocations on the one hand; and from purely academic research disciplines on the other.
To become a profession, five criteria should be met -at least in part.A sixth is optional.The differences between minor and major professions are a matter of degree and evolution.
• There should be an academic degree offered in the field, concomitant with forward-looking research.
The major professions work towards basic standardisation of curricula within a given country.Some professions (but not law) may also seek to standardise curricula across countries.• Professionals would be expected to exercise a significant degree of judgement and discretion, rather than simply apply an almost "automatic" set of rules.• There must be a market for the profession's service and skills, not only in research and teaching, but also -and mostly -in society and the economy.In the case of a minor profession, there may still be blurred distinctions in the practice arena between that profession and others, especially professions that had previously fulfilled a similar role to some extent.
• There should be an organised professional body of members, with the mission of promoting awareness of the profession among the general public and clarifying its boundaries.The professional body, often self-organised, should promote knowledge about who may be regarded as a professional, and what types of functions the practitioner is trained to take on.The professional body should also promote shared professional norms and a code of ethics.The major professions often do have a code of ethics -whether initiated by them or legally mandated -but these differ greatly in content and in capacity for enforcement.• To ensure that the education is relevant to the practice arena, there should be organisational links between the academic bodies and the professional institutions.For example, there may be advisory curriculum boards, joint accreditation procedures, and jointly designed life-long learning programmes.• Optional: legal recognition.Some professions have legal recognition -but the degree and contents vary greatly.Strong legal status, encompassing the right to practise as well as sanctions upon others outside the profession if they practise, is typical of most major professions.However, legal recognition is not a prerequisite for the existence of a profession.The legally recognised professions are usually of two types: those that legislators view as endangering life or safety, such as medicine and some types of engineering or architecture, and those regarded as the long arm of the state, such as law, chartered accountancy, and sometimes also land appraisal (valuers).Many of the minor professions have no legal standing at all, or only a weak form.There may even be major professions, such as types of engineering, that have only weak legal standing because they are perceived as neither lifeendangering nor as the trustees of the state.
I invite each reader to apply at least five of these criteria to planning in her or his own country.There will be significant differences among all the criteria: for example, in the number of fully fledged academic planning degrees relative to population size or similar indicators; the academic status of these degrees; the age of the professional organisation and its numeric and political strength; and the degree to which the profession faces legal or political impediments fostered by competing, stronghold professions.
Among the major professions, the five obligatory criteria are clearly met, as well as the sixth optional one.But among the minor professions, such as planning, the lines demarcating a profession from other activities are blurred.If planning is to evolve in the direction of a major profession, it may be necessary to achieve better articulation of the profession's unique assets and its distinction from other professions.
High quality planning education and strong professional organisations are both necessary for the profession to flourish.They are the first and the fourth criteria on my "professionalism" list, and ostensibly the easiest to gauge.In recent years, there has been a growing international scholarly discussion about planning education, and even a UN report featuring a major chapter on the topic where the global state is surveyed in depth (Stiftel et al., 2009).However, I do not know of published research about the robustness of the planning profession.I shall attempt to close this gap to some extent, based on my own observations over time.Perhaps because the major part of my academic home has been in a tiny country (Israel), far away from agglomerations of other planning schools, I became a passionate participant-observer of the evolution of planning education and the planning profession in other parts of the world and have visited many planning schools.My international comparative research on planning law has equipped me with an additional (though partial) prism on planning practices in some countries.I will thus hazard to provide a rough picture of the state of planning education and the profession based on my own observations, fortified by others' research, and covering selected parts of the world.How well are planning education and the profession doing around the world today?

The Evolution of Planning Education
How well is the first criterion fulfilled: the existence of a distinct academic degree for educating professional planners?An attempt to answer this question must begin by noting that there are still many differences across countries in the definition of what constitutes appropriate planning education, the institutional affiliation within universities, contents of the curricula, relationships with other disciplines or professions, and titles and standing of the degrees awarded.This is true not only globally, but also across Europe -as meticulously analysed by Andrea Frank and a group of colleagues from several major European traditions (Frank et al., 2014; see also Bertolini et al., 2012).Yet, despite the locally driven behaviour of the academic realm, the supra-national institutions of planning education that emerged since the 1980s have managed to do the almost-impossible: to establish shared criteria for what constitutes planning education.Today it is these institutions that are the key engines propelling planning towards professionalisation and globalisation.This important momentum did not occur stochastically; it was and still is directed by the efforts of leaders in planning education in various parts of the world that are helping to build these supra-national institutions.As an avid follower of the process, I can recount, first-hand, stories about the key milestones in this process.

A Transatlantic Picture of Planning Education
In 1981 I participated in the first conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), held in Washington DC independently from the professional body, the American Planners' Association.Established in 1969, ACSP was at first a small group of American academics interested in coordinating and promoting planning education.This was probably the first continental association of planning schools in the world (ACSP, n.d.).Interestingly, the A in ACSP does not stand for American, as many might have assumed.Perhaps this was because no one at the time thought that equivalent planning-school associations would be established elsewhere in the world.(A similar assumption may have led the founders of the world's first professional planning association -the Royal Town Planning Institute, or RTPI -to omit its national affiliation from its name.)I was the only non-North American participating at that conference (there was a few Canadians).In retrospect, this event proved to be a milestone, not only in the evolution of planning academia in the United States, but also internationally.
Six years later, in 1987, a group of leading European academics in planning convened in Amsterdam to found the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP).Once again, I was the only outsider participating.I regard this event as even more cardinal to the global evolution of planning education and thus the profession.
To understand why AESOP's role was so unique, it is first necessary to follow the international expansion of planning education.
It so happens that, in 1992, I decided to write a paper in order to celebrate AESOP's fifth anniversary and the first joint trans-Atlantic conference of planning schools convened jointly with ACSP.The paper was titled 'A transatlantic view of planning education and professional practice', published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, ACSP's official academic journal (Alterman, 1992).I analysed the different modes of planning in the United States and the United Kingdom, and compared these to the then-young planning education in various parts of Europe.Using that paper as a benchmark, and supplementing it with recent research by others, one can assess the great progress made in spreading planning education and professionalism to all parts of Europe (see Frank et al., 2014;Stiftel et al., 2009).
At the time when AESOP was established, there was still a glaring gap in planning education between English-speaking countries and the rest of the world.The world's first academic degree verging on planning was established in the United Kingdom at the University of Liverpool in 1909 (University of Liverpool, n.d.).
Although called Civic Design, that degree was (and still is) distinct from architecture or civil engineering.The first buds of planning education and professional organisation arrived in the United States and Canada much later -in the 1940s and 1950s.The number of schools there was much smaller relative to population size than in the United Kingdom.Nevertheless, the North American schools still preceded the first group of European planning schools by approximately two decades.
Thus, upon AESOP's founding in 1987, the majority of the schools eligible for membership were from the British Isles.There was only a handful of European planning schools that granted academic planning degrees distinct from architecture, landscape architecture, surveying or engineering, and only a single planning school in all of the former Socialist Bloc countries (Kunzmann, 1991;Shaw et al., 1991).The number of member schools in AESOP at the time was much smaller than in the United States.
Today, the transatlantic profile of planning education is perhaps the reverse of this.There are more members of AESOP than of ACSP.The increase in the number of planning schools across Europe has been remarkable, and includes several Eastern European states where planning has taken hold strongly in a short time.AESOP's web site reports over 150 member schools, including many from former Socialist Bloc countries (AESOP, 2017).Frank et al. (2014, p.44) counts 214 programmes offering planning education.However, there is a blatantly uneven distribution of planning programmes relative to population size.Mostly glaringly, Spain and several Eastern European countries are far behind, and other professionals carry out planning work.So, both the United States and Europe still have a long way to go.
More important than the numeric distribution of planning schools, however, is the globalisation of planning education in the deepest sense, to which I shall return, after shifting the focus to the special case of planning education in China.

Planning Education in China and its Global Implications
An even more optimistic picture of planning's global future comes from another part of the world.This is important because Europe and the United States are no longer undergoing major urbanisation, while many other parts of the world are.A major leap in planning education and the planning profession is currently occurring in Asia (Kunzmann, 2015), and most spectacularly in China.

The Chinese Explosion in Planning Education
Needless to say, China's urbanisation challenges are unprecedented.This is part of the explanation for the steep rise of planning education and the planning profession (Tian, 2016;Huang, 2012).Some other countries have also experienced dramatic urbanisation, yet the emergence of the planning profession has not been as accelerated as in China.Interestingly, in China, there were modest beginnings to established planning degrees as early as the 1950s -nine in total, with Soviet-style content (Tian, 2016).This process came to a halt during China's Cultural Revolution (1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976), when most development projects went into stagnation.Architects and engineers too were not in demand and many, like other professionals, were sent off for rural work.Universities were closed, and the few planning programmes were dismantled (Tian, 2016).
When the Cultural Revolution ended, and the economic reforms commenced in 1978, the Chinese government adopted policies seeking to create profound changes in the economy, society, and the physical environment.This provided a unique window of opportunity for precisely the kinds of skills that planning offers: skills in tackling multi-faceted problems and synthesising areas of knowledge.There was an increasing demand for professional skills (Huang, 2012;Tian, 2016).
However, need alone does not create a profession.In China, planning education and the profession were unlikely to evolve in a "bottom up" manner.Government would have to lead, and higher education has to obtain state approval.After the end of the Cultural Revolution, it took some years for university education to resume fully, and for the old planning schools to be re-established.In effect, the boost in planning schools began only in 1989.Since then, the annual rate of increase of planning programmes is (probably) unprecedented anywhere.
In 2017 there were probably some 300 schools offering planning degrees in China. 1 If this number does not seem so impressive compared with population size, one should note that only about half of China's 1.4 billion people are already urbanised.My conjecture is that the number of planners per population size in rural areas is considerably lower than in urban areas.As the national programme of controlled urbanisation proceeds, more schools are likely to emerge.R. Alterman / Transactions of the Association of European Schools of Planning • 1 (2017) 1-17

The Deeper Implications of the Chinese Model
The quantitative increase in urban dwellers and workers and the well-known shift to a market-led development process are the well-recognised generators of demand for planners in China.In addition, there is a slower but consistent qualitative change among decision makers and the general public, with raised awareness of the need to take environmental and social factors into account in creating liveable urban agglomerations.
In my frequent lectures in Chinese planning programmes, I sense the quick pulse of knowledge creation by researchers and students and the thirst for learning more.In meetings with senior Chinese central and local government officials, I experience a determination to learn seriously from other (Western) countries, to an intensity that I have not encountered elsewhere.
There may be an additional, under-recognised aspect of China that may have given planning a special boost.I am referring to the country's City Planning Act 1990 and further legislation and regulations adopted later.As an observer of planning law internationally, I can testify how exceptional in comparative terms this legislation is.Most other Communist countries did not adopt functioning planning laws (see, for example, Renaud and Bertaud, 1997;Gdesz, 2010).China was a pioneer not only in comparison to socialist countries (most of which were European) but also in comparison to other developing countries, where planning legislation tends to be antiquated or dysfunctional (Alterman, 2013).
By enacting planning law, the Chinese government (officially the parliament) was handcuffing its own hands (Balme, 2013).The City Planning Act made rules regarding decisions more multi-scalar and multi-faceted, limiting the authority of top-down decisions and moving away from mainly project-driven decisions.Since then, the role of the market in China has greatly amplified, and many urban and rural development initiatives are market driven.The preparation of planning documents in this institutionally more complex context, in accordance with legal procedures, needs many more trained professionals in both the public and private sectors.The introduction of planning law was probably an additional factor in the awareness of the usefulness of the planning discipline and profession.
In China, higher education has taken the lead in propelling the planning profession.Although there are two nationwide associations of planning professionals, Huang (2012, pp.98-99) notes that they have not had much influence in forming the profession.There are rigorous national tests to become a registered planner.At the all-important local government level, where much of urban development policy is determined, planners hold important positions, whether in the government or the market sector.I myself have witnessed an impressive example: I was invited to give a presentation before several hundred planning practitioners in a major city, and was told that these represented only a fraction of the total number of planners employed by the cityamounting to all the planners in entire countries twice the size of that city.

China as a Laboratory for Globalisation
I have devoted special attention to China because of its potential importance far beyond its borders.A close look at the China phenomenon unlocks insights about the prospects of globalisation.Due to China's unique political history (especially the Cultural Revolution), the emergence of planning education there may have experienced less of a "turf war" with entrenched older professions compared with some other countries.It has therefore been possible to observe planning's role and net merits relatively quickly.This achievement does not mean that there has not been any inter-professional conflict, especially with architects.Huang (2012) notes that the government accreditation board has so far given some priority to planning degrees in departments affiliated with schools of architecture.However, this should not diminish the importance of the fact that planning in China today is recognised as an independent academic field, and that a degree in architecture is not a prerequisite.
Thus, China may be the world's best laboratory for testing how planning can evolve into a discipline and profession relatively quickly, and how it can gain appreciation by decision makers and the public at large.In many ways, China is a leader among developing and transition countries.There are today additional transitioneconomy countries in Asia and beyond that seek to emulate China.Extrapolation of China's rate of planning education indicates an optimistic growth curve for planning education in developing countries.Additionally, like many other aspects of globalisation today, perhaps this trend will also send waves back to Europe and North America.This is good news for the global future of the planning profession.
I now turn to a discussion of the evolution of the planning profession.In view of the dearth of international research on the topic, this discussion provides only preliminary thoughts.

The Planning Profession and its Competitors
Which comes first: the education chicken or the professional egg?The sequential relationship between planning education and formation of a professional organisation varies across countries.

The Evolution of Professional Associations
In some countries, a rudimentary professional organisation preceded the launching of academic education, but in others, this was the other way around.The world's oldest planners' professional organisation was formed in the United Kingdom in 1914, and was at first composed of practitioners from a variety of professions who realised that there was need for a new trans-disciplinary professional group, subsequently named the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI, n.d.).2Later, other national institutes emerged in English-speaking countries.Today, professional planning associations exist far beyond the English-speaking world.From my experience, I would guess that, where there are academic degrees in planning, there will usually also be some form of planners' association -even if nascent and small.
However, in many countries, the identity of what constitutes planning as a profession is still hazy.There may even be different official names for the planning profession within a single country, as across Canada's provinces (Canadian Institute of Planners, 2011).Architecture, landscape architecture, engineering or surveying may still be regarded as the sole, or major, entry door for urban practitioners.In some countries, the monopoly of these professions is anchored in legislation.The primacy of architecture still holds true in Latin America, some South and East European countries, and parts of the Middle East.In some countries, such as Spain, there are in fact two or more associations with words denoting "planning" or "urbanism" in their titles, but the larger organisation caters only to holders of architecture degrees (Frank et al., 2014).
An extreme example of the reluctance of the architecture profession to recognise the existence of an independent planning profession comes from my own country.The Israeli Architects' Association has obstinately refused to recognise planning as a profession independent from architecture.This anachronism is at odds with the fact that Israel's first academic planning degree in planning was established back in 1970 -rather early compared to many Continental European schools.The Architects' Association, in coalition with the more numerous engineers, has used any opportunity to lobby the legislature and other bodies to block the eligibility of holders of planning degrees from assuming some key statutory planning positions (unless the candidates happen to be architects as well).Despite these hurdles, and based on their qualification and high level of professional commitment, Israeli planning graduates have successfully competed for planning positions (those that are not explicitly blocked legally) and have made significant positive impacts on the function of planning and on society in general (Alterman, 2017).
Beyond architecture and engineering, in some countries there may be other competing professions as well.
As urban issues gain more visibility and prestige, such competition is likely to rise even more.These other fields tend to be minor professions too (or just academic disciplines).An example is geography, which in some countries is regarded as the planners' mother discipline (Frank, 2012).
Sometimes, competitors arise and then disappear.An example is public policy analysis (or science), which seemed to be a growing competitor for planning in United States in the 1980s and 1990s.I was on sabbatical at the time, teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Planning educators in some American schools found the new field attractive and greatly expanded the share of courses devoted to generic public policy -planning's second pillar -at the expense of the first pillar -substantive knowledge about the spatial dimensions of cities and regions.Being concerned about the implications of this shift for the future of the planning profession, I initiated a collaborative paper with a leading academic in policy analysis.We delved into the deeper differences between the two professions in terms of their origins, mission, subject matter, clientele, ethics and more (Alterman and MacRae, 1983).I am told that the American Planning Accreditation Board, which assesses planning schools in the United States, found this analysis useful.Today, the threat that generic policy analysis could displace planning education's substantive focus on cities and regions has largely dissipated.

Coordination Between Academic Institutions and Professional Associations
A few words about the fifth criterion for the existence of a profession: institutionalised cooperation between academia and the professional organisation.This criterion is important to avoid the danger that a professional education would become disconnected from practice and market demand and might then shed its professional aspects and evolve into an academic discipline alone.To avoid this, major professions often institutionalise some form of linkage between academia and the professional organisation.
A model for well-institutionalised cooperation is the American Planning Accreditation Board (2017).Joint teams of professional planners appointed by the APA and academics appointed by the ACSP conduct periodic assessment of planning schools and evaluate new candidate programmes.This is a joint initiative, and in the US context, does not require permission from government.AESOP has not progressed as far as ACSP in forging links with Europe-wide planners' associations, such as the ECTP-CEU (European Council of Spatial Planners-Conseil européen des urbanistes). 3There are probably many variations around the world, but I hazard a guess that, in general, this criterion is as yet weakly fulfilled.
In China, too, institutional linkages between academia and the profession are still rudimentary.However, unlike the ACSP or AESOP, joint accreditation would have to be conducted under government authority.
Although there are two professional associations of planners, Huang (2012) notes that neither association has been granted any status by government in the formal accreditation of planning programmes.This task is under the direct authority of the relevant government ministry, through the Advisory Committee on Urban Planning Accreditation.

Legal Recognition of the Planning Profession
The sixth criterion -legal recognition -deserves some attention even though it is optional for the existence of a profession.I am not aware of cross-national research on this point, but to the best of my knowledge, in many countries, planning as a profession lacks legal status and protection, placing it alongside some other minor professions.There are some initiatives for partial recognition.In Saskatchewan, Canada, for example, provincial legislation obliges the government to hire only "registered planners" for a set of specified positions, and only they may sign certain planning-related documents specified by law.Non-planners may still undertake the unregulated types of planning work as long as they do not call themselves professional planners.
In some other countries, planners have adopted a different strategy for legal recognition.Instead of seeking independent legal recognition, they become members of architecture, engineering, or surveyors' associations, thus gaining a form of legal status, presumably after negotiating with the older and better established professions about defining what would constitute a planner's professional turf.There are probably significant differences across countries in this mode as well.
But, for planners in many countries, overcoming the objections of contending professions and achieving recognition by the legislators is not a realistic hope (or perhaps it is not desired).In several countries, planning associations have relied on self-registration and certification of practitioners by the professional association itself.This is an important model for a minor profession in its evolution.This strategy has been adopted by the American Planning Association, which offers holders of planning degrees the opportunity to take exams and become "certified planners".This type of strategy could serve as a substitute for legal recognition once the marketplace learns to assign value to self-certification.
There may be many sub-models of self-registration.One American state, New Jersey, has developed an interesting hybrid model which takes an extra step on the path of legal recognition.In order to become a "certified licensed professional planner" in New Jersey, one must pass state exams in planning-related laws in addition to attaining self-certification by the American Planning Association.
The topic of legal recognition deserves greater attention by planning professional institutions, planning educators, and planning theorists.Is legal recognition desirable?If so, what type and what degree?These are important questions if the planning profession seeks to evolve towards becoming a major profession.

The Globalisation Challenge
For true globalisation to occur, it is not enough to be satisfied with the growing geographic distribution of planning schools.There is also a need for deep-rooted change that would enable knowledge calibration and transfer.This is the challenge of globalisation, crucial if planning is to progress from a minor towards a major profession.

Beyond Internationalisation: Global Knowledge Transfer
The international presence of a given profession is not the same as the globalisation of knowledge in the deeper sense, which would lead to greater convergence.The legal profession illustrates this distinction best.Law is one of the major professions and one of the oldest, existing in almost every society, yet it is largely a locallygrounded profession.Every country -even within the European Union -has a different set of laws.A lawyer trained in the United States would not find much common ground with a lawyer trained in France, apart from rudimentary notions of the role of law and some basic classifications.Basic doctrines in law in general, and in planning law in particular, may differ even among neighbouring countries, as I have demonstrated in a largescale research project about how 13 countries -all members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) -tackle a specific topic in planning-law quite differently (Alterman, 2010).Over time, court rulings further distance one country's law from another.This holds not only for common law countries but, to a more modest extent, for civil law countries as well.My comparative research has demonstrated this in planning law (Alterman, 2010).
By contrast, urban dynamics, unlike law, do portray many shared traits, even if the specifics differ.To become a leading profession to meet the challenges of global urbanism, it will not be enough for the local equivalences of the planning profession to spread internationally.There must also be a stronger, globally-shared body of knowledge -what has been called a "one world" approach (Stiftel et al., 2009, p.188).Planning educators and practitioners will need to move beyond the "comfort zone" of their familiar national contexts (or those of similar countries).We will have to learn how to transfer knowledge across national and continental borders in a manner that would fit local needs.In this way, "best practices" will not remain on their original shelves, but could be harnessed and duly modified for transfer to other cities or countries around the globe.This is global knowledge married with local understanding.This is the "glocalisation" of planning.And in this task, AESOP has played a crucial role.

The AESOP Experiment and its Role in Promoting Globalisation
In an earlier part of this paper, I recounted how AESOP's establishment was an important milestone in the internationalisation of planning education.In retrospect, AESOP's role is even more significant.
When AESOP was inaugurated in 1987, it may have seemed to be just a European mirror of North America.Klaus Kunzmann, AESOP's first president, recounts how he and Patsy Healey -AESOP's founding mother -raised the idea of forming a European equivalent to ACSP (Kunzmann, 2012).But the idea of forming AESOP had, from the very beginning, the potential of creating a deep transformation of the field, far beyond promoting the geographic extension of planning education onto an additional continent.The seeds of transformation were embedded in AESOP's multicultural, multilingual and divided political structure which reflects Europe's built-in diversity and rather hectic history.The goal was to enable exchanges of knowledge about urban and regional issues, while overcoming differing languages, geographic-demographic contexts, legal-institutional frameworks, and political vicissitudes.English was just a bridging language.
Even though I was not a member of any European school, I made a special trip to Amsterdam to attend the inaugural ceremony.I sensed that AESOP might be a global experimental ground to see whether our field can mature into a global profession.The cross-cultural and cross-national exchange, I hoped, would release planning from the umbilical cord that ties it to its national-local origins.
Real globalisation of our profession could not rely only on journal papers and books.These are pre-screened and evaluated for quality and contents by editors and scholars whose experience is usually with their own domestic modes of planning.Direct interpersonal communication among planning scholars and educators is essential in order to peel away the conceptual and terminological barriers that make it difficult to understand the unique mixture of local and global that characterises our field.
My expectations have been fulfilled: the intellectual sparks that AESOP meetings created among academics and students have stimulated and accelerated research collaboration across borders and continents.Year after year, while attending annual AESOP conferences and joint ones with ACSP or the Global Planning Education Association Network (I have never missed a single one!),I became infatuated with how planning academics, who at first shared little common ground, gradually began to share knowledge.Academic exchange intensified year by year, levelling out the conspicuous discrepancies that had existed during AESOP's initial years.
So, under AESOP's multinational canopy and scholars' special efforts to overcome language barriers, a vibrant community of researchers and educators has emerged.By exchanging knowledge about urban issues, planning institutions, education curricula, and modes of practice, AESOP has become the world's prime experimental ground for transforming the planning profession from local to global, and from global to glocal.
An additional AESOP institution which has contributed to globalisation is the PhD Seminar held annually.I participated four times as part of the mentors' team in four different host countries.The seminars are a distilled version of what globalised planning scholarship is about.The students are selected so as to represent many languages, cultures, and national affiliations.Occasionally, students outside Europe also submit their candidacy.Other associations of planning schools have not managed to establish equivalent fora.Thus, Europe's future planning educators and researchers are implanted with the genes of globalised thinking.Perhaps it is time for AESOP to clone this format into a global model, to be held frequently in various parts of the world.
Following AESOP, additional multinational and multicultural planning associations were established.The Asian Planning Schools Association was founded in 1993.(However, the word "Asian" is in fact a misnomer; the Association in fact accepts membership only from East Asian countries.)More recently, the Association of African Planning Schools was established in 1999.Unlike ACSP and AESOP, these associations cover highly turbulent regions of the world, with occasional military hostilities and humanitarian crises.It would be interesting to research how these organisations cope with such challenges.
The Association of African Planning Schools deserves a closer look because it presents a very different model.Due to the poor financial situation of most of the African schools, they have been unable to pay fees to finance the Association's operations.They therefore sought help from international donor organisations and have officially allied with major pro-poor NGOs to carry out a combination of advocacy, educational and practicerelated missions (Watson and Odendaal, 2012;Odendaal, 2012).Thus, the Association of African Planning Schools has become a hybrid organisation, operating as both a supra-national academic association, and as an NGO.While Watson and Odendaal (2012) express strong support for this merger, they also note that more academic functions, such as monitoring and accreditation, have received less attention.
A further milestone in the globalisation of planning education was the establishment of the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN).It was announced during the First World Planning Conference held in Shanghai in 2001, and has since promoted several global conferences of planning schools and coordinates with UN-Habitat.GPEAN has launched a series of books (five so far) with an important mission: to collate selected research papers recommended by each of the member organisations.The prize papers -originally published in various languages -are translated and edited with the aim of promoting the global exchange of knowledge in planning across cultures and languages.This laudable but as yet limited enterprise should serve as a model for more types of initiatives.GPEAN contains the seeds for promoting further globalisation of planning knowledge.

Open Access and the Need to Stimulate Global e-Communication
As befitting AESOP, the Association is now taking another step toward globalisation.The launching of the open access journal is not just a matter of technical convenience and cost saving.For planning to become more globalised, planning knowledge must reach educators in developing countries, where university budgets for subscription to traditional journals are rather scarce.The new journal could serve as an important additional instrument to globalise knowledge exchange.
And here is another modest observation about electronic media.Surprisingly, to date, there is no global platform for simple and free email communication among faculty members and students in planning schools.
The US-based PLANET listserv, which was targeted largely at American faculty members but was open to planning academics from other countries as well, closed down in 2016 after 20 years of voluntary operation.
The internal controversies among groups of American academics that led to this closure are explained by Nguyen et al. (2017).The listserv has been replaced by a Facebook group, with the intention that another listserv would be created under ACSP's moderation.The founders of the Facebook group do mention that there have been some objections to Facebook, but they do not mention an issue concerning global access; Facebook is blocked by the Chinese government.Perhaps AESOP will take the lead to establish a free and technologically simple communication platform accessible globally.
Although major strides are being made towards the globalisation of urban knowledge, there are still questions to ask regarding the capacity of transforming planning from a minor to a more globally significant profession.These are questions to be addressed by planning theory.

Challenges to Planning Theory
If the planning profession is to lead the global urban challenge, it must strengthen its professional identity and evolve from a minor to a major profession.However, planning, more than some other professions, has a built-in ambivalence about becoming a major profession, and even about professionalism itself.The most controversial of the six criteria for professionalism is probably the fourth -the need to strengthen the boundaries of the profession and distinguish it from other professions and from the lay public.Establishing boundaries is inevitable in the formation of every profession.There are negative aspects in this processnormative, instrumental, or both.Each profession must find its own balance point, and it might change over time.
There are two aspects to the boundaries issue, reflecting planning's two pillars: one has to do with the subject matter of planning -cities, space and society; the other with the roles of planners in the realm of government policy and public decision making.
The first aspect relates to the first pillar -planning's subject matter -where the borderlines are inherently elusive: cities and regions are dynamic, both physically and conceptually.There are new fields of knowledge and practice emerging all the time, with which planners as synthesisers are called to interface (examples of recent newcomers are technology for the "smart city" and public health for the "healthy city").Some may argue that no single profession can be the synthesiser of all those fields.But this type of challenge is precisely what has led to the emergence of the planning profession in the first place.In the past, planning's boundaries were easier to determine because planners wore spectacles which focused attention on the physical environment.Today, planners wear kaleidoscopes, and planners are uniquely trained at making sense of the more multifaceted and multi-colour pictures they are able to see.Therefore, the boundaries issue in this first pillar should not be a major concern for planning -although it might concern other professions or disciplines in a "turf war".
The second concern is more difficult to overcome.It is derived from planning's second pillar -its role and mission in shaping public policies for the "public interest" (defined differently from differing perspectives and over time; Campbell and Marshall, 2001).This means that planning has an intimate interface with government institutions, with depositories of power in society, with disempowerment, and with other forces that shape public decisions.
Planning theory is the field of knowledge that tries to provide planners with the concepts, norms and methods for fulfilling their public policy mission.I have called planning theory the "beacon" whose bright light should guide planners and help them overcome, or at least manage, the many dilemmas encountered in their daily interface with power (Alterman, 2017).Planning theory is not one single paradigm.Ever since planning theory emerged as a distinct field of knowledge in the 1960s in the United States and Canada (first collated by Faludi, 1973), it has gone through several phases and debates in the quest for offering planners conceptual frameworks and methods that are both just and "doable".At that time, the scientific method and its reliance on rationality was considered to be the major paradigm that would succeed in convincing policy makers of the merits of a particular plan or policy.This model was later criticised for being ineffective in really convincing decision makers (Innes and Booher, 2015).The rational model was also criticised for its conservative streak and insensitivity to issues of injustice vis-à-vis the loci of power (Forester, 1989).Various streams of planning theory emerged.
A major stream in planning theory is communicative planning.It still commands centre place, despite some criticism, to which Innes and Booher (2015) respond.The currency of this paradigm is indicated by Lauria and Wagner's (2006) quantitative analysis of research publications, and by my ongoing observations of the research topics of PhD students and early-career academics at AESOP.The pioneering thinkers in this field -Healey, Forester, and Innes -argue that planners' role is to help to dissipate communication barriers between professionals and citizens (Healey, 1992a(Healey, , 1992b(Healey, , 1993(Healey, , 1997;;Innes, 1995Innes, , 1998;;Forester, 1989Forester, , 1998)).However, the evolution towards professionalism usually entails the emergence of a unique professional language, or "jargon" -whether this is done intentionally or unintentionally.This process characterises the formation of any profession.In the case of planning, Tamy Stav and I coined the term "Planguage" (Stav, 2004;Stav and Alterman, in progress).The creation of an in-profession language inevitably distances not only other professionals, but also the direct beneficiaries of planning and the general public, as planning theorists have demonstrated (Mandelbaum, 1991(Mandelbaum, , 1996;;Tate and Campbell, 2000).Such distancing is anathema to the essence of communicative planning and, indeed, runs counter to basic, long-standing principles in planning theory.From their early days, courses in planning theory have charged planners with the roles of advocacy for the disempowered, promotion of citizen action, and insistence on government transparency (Davidoff, 1965;Forester, 1980).
Beyond attention to language barriers, communicative planning theory also directs planners' awareness to the distribution of power.Planners' mission is to try and reshape power relations and their outcomes towards a more just and fair public policy.Innes and Booher (2015) state the main thesis of communicative planning thus: The power relationship works through communication, which builds shared meanings of power -of who and what is powerful (p.202).
Communication mediates the way these power relationships are constructed and challenged.Thus the power of the state and communication power are inextricably entangled, shaping and influencing one another (p.203).
These and similar observations are backed by a robust body of empirical studies spanning three decades and by a powerful ideological call to create a more just society.
The way to instil planners with these concepts is through planning education.These topics are indeed a major part in the contents of planning theory courses, where these are being offered.Richard Klosterman (2011) has conducted periodic studies of the contents of planning theory course readings, and these do show some convergence, but he has covered only North American schools.Sadly, the globalisation of planning theory has a very long way to go before it reaches the majority of planning students -the future practitioners.Most of the scholars in planning theory, especially the progressive and critical modes, come from Western cultures and well-established democratic regimes (Sanyal, 1989(Sanyal, , 2002)).
In most planning schools around the world, there is not yet a course in planning theory (as distinct from urban theories).For example, in all of China's hundreds of schools, there are not yet any courses in planning theory (Tian, 2016).Planners are not encouraged to adopt critical thinking (Huang, 2012).Planning curricula in China stress scientific analysis and quantitative models on the one hand, and design skills on the other (Tian, 2016).Indeed, I too have observed that the skills of Chinese students and academics in these realms are very impressive.
Why is planning theory as we know it absent in so many countries?The issue is not just pedagogy and curriculum-building.Planning theory runs deep into the issue of power distribution itself: in many countries -certainly most of the developing countries -a planning practitioner who overtly criticises government and power, promotes citizen activism unsolicited by government, or demands full transparency of government information, is unlikely to get very far.Planning educators in such regimes probably do not introduce planning theory into the curriculum (if allowed at all) in order to avoid a major dissonance between what the students are taught and what reality permits.
To date, communicative planning theory or related bodies of theory have not given enough attention to the political and legal-governmental regimes in which planners in a given jurisdiction work.As Innes andBooher (2015, p.2016), two leading contributors to communicative planning, admit (or perhaps just note as a fact): Communicative planning theorists tend not to comment on the power of the state except indirectly.It is a given -the setting for planning.Their focus is on what planners, planning organizations, and other players can do and how, rather than on what constrains them or on what ought to happen.
Perhaps the challenge for planning theorists is to adjust communicative planning or related theories so as to take into account the power realities that planners face in their own workplace.There may be room to develop a more graduated and transferable set of norms and ethics that could guide planners working in differing regimes and cultures and could gradually rise to higher grounds.Instead of a single beacon with one strong shining light, planning theories could offer modulated, smaller beacons sensitive to the realistic capacities of planners in specific governmental and cultural contexts.

Unresolved Dilemmas
I am well aware that I have not referred to the current pessimism in Western countries about the future of planning in the wake of Brexit, regime change in the United States and the rise of highly conservative parties in other countries.However, if one takes a long-range view of the evolution of the planning profession over time and geography, as I have tried to do, the conclusion is that planning as a profession is on the rise -and steeply so.
The challenges emerging from Habitat III and the buzzing New Urban Agenda will inevitably create a more prominent profile for our field in the eyes of politicians, students, civil society, entrepreneurs, and the media.At the same time, other professions relevant to urbanism could also benefit from the higher exposure.The global cityscape is fast evolving, and so are the opportunities for our profession's future.
Should planning educators and professional leaders seek to seize the opportunity and help to transform planning into a major profession?Or should planning remain in the cosy status of a minor profession with open-ended, flexible, evolving boundaries that have navigated us safely to this point?The answers to these questions are not easy.
For those who think that planning should evolve towards becoming a major profession, I have tried to point out some of the steps that could be taken.First is globalisation, or more precisely, glocalisation.In order to become a globally strong profession, planners and planning academics need to be able to share areas of knowledge that are transferable, and at the same time, be able to distinguish these from knowledge embedded in the local context.Second is the establishment of stronger professional organisations with a will to define professional boundaries vis-à-vis competing professions.Third is strengthening the ties between academic institutions and professional organisations in order to ensure that planning education remains relevant to practice while leading to new horizons.The fourth step is to make efforts to obtain legal status for the profession, at least of "soft" versions.Among the various approaches to legal recognition I presented above, the Saskatchewan model is an interesting midway model.
However, there are reasons for scepticism about whether planning can or should seek to become one of the major professions.Is it realistic for the planning profession to evolve in this direction?The institutions of planning are not usually fortified by strong legal anchors, not even on the national scale, and certainly not on the supra-national scale.The professional turf for planners is fluid.This is part of the open-ended nature of planning and its effervescence.And yet, the speed by which planning education and the profession have evolved in only a few decades indicates that our profession possesses greater internal strengths than its loose format may indicate.
On a normative level, there are significant price tags for the evolution into a major profession.As analysed in the section about planning theory, the planning profession has built-in ambivalences about the measures entailed in building a major profession: fortification from other professions, inevitable distancing from the lay public, or the greater dependence on government that legal recognition entails.This ambivalence is embedded deep in the ethos of our profession.
Most likely, planning in different countries and regions of the world will evolve in different directions, sometimes in response to public policies or needs, sometimes due to other external or internal factors.An important stimulus for the planning profession could come from new planning laws under consideration in some developing countries (a topic beyond the scope of this paper).In any case, planners should never give up our profession's meta-mission of achieving more just societies.It is up to planning educators, scholars in planning theory, and the leaders of our dispersed professional organisations to prepare the planning profession to become a significant actor in meeting the challenges of global urbanism and a better future for all.