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Planning

View the employability skills

A graduate in planning typically will have the ability to:

  • solve problems creatively and collect, analyse, evaluate and synthesise planning data
  • apply practical design skills
  • influence through negotiation, facilitation and networking
  • exercise organisational sensitivity in multi professional working environments
  • present arguments using a variety of formats
  • use IT, statistics, numeracy and literacy skills
  • take responsibility enthusiastically for their own learning
  • manage and produce work to time
  • work individually and in groups
  • exercise initiative and independence within a range of personal values.

Planning contributes to delivering and safeguarding environmental sustainability, social equity, cultural diversity and economic prosperity, all aspirations that civilised societies hold dear. It generates creative proposals for change by means of negotiation and advocacy within a complex web of competing interests. Positive action is the heart of planning and operates within environmental, social, economic, legal and governance constraints.

Academically, planning is the study of the way societies plan, design, manage and regulate change in the built and natural environment. It therefore includes the study of why and how societies intervene, shape, organise and change natural and built environments so as to secure an agreed range of social, economic and environmental objectives. The core of the discipline is the study of the rationale for planning and how it is practised. This involves understanding the processes of spatial change in the built and natural environments and also understanding the arguments for intervening in these processes. It requires an understanding of the land, property and development markets, including economic, financial and legal aspects. It also requires an understanding of design and the development of sustainable built and natural environments.

Other skills relating to employability that can be learned include the ability to:

  • identify and formulate planning problems and to write clear aims and objectives
  • translate theory and knowledge into practical planning policies and actions, including formulating and articulating strategies, plans and designs
  • collect, analyse, evaluate and synthesise planning data
  • research in planning
  • monitor and evaluate planning interventions and outcomes
  • demonstrate an awareness of professional working practices and values
  • formulate and propose elementary policies, strategies and courses of actions
  • define and analyse planning problems and arguments effectively and appropriately
  • demonstrate understanding of the treatment and exposition of subject matter, making connections between the different areas of the planning curriculum.

To check the growing range of resources produced by the Subject Centre to support employability and the use of this profile (including the Skills and Attributes map) go to www.cebe.heacademy.ac.uk.

This profile, produced in 2004, is based on the QAA benchmark to be found at www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/default.asp.


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