LAWRENCE — Urban and community planners have a vital role in preparing their cities for climate change. But are the university programs training them for those careers adequately preparing them for climate change in terms of mitigating, adapting to and being resilient to the effects of climate change? New research from the University of Kansas has found American and Canadian universities have made progress but vary widely in how they address climate change in their curriculum.
The need to address climate change in urban planning has been acknowledged for some time, but standards on how to do so have been absent. To better understand how planning programs are covering the issue, three researchers surveyed how North American universities include the topic in their curriculum.
Elisabeth Infield of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mark Seasons of the University of Waterloo and Ward Lyles, associate professor of public affairs & administration at KU, surveyed more than 100 universities. The study was published in the journal Planning Practice & Research.
Results of the Canadian study showed planning programs tend to cover the basics of climate science in topic-specific courses and that the majority of such content was offered in allied fields such as geography. Courses were regularly designed to promote active learning, considered local and regional context and focused on themes of justice, equity and vulnerability to hazards. Courses tended to also focus on solutions more than the physical science.
"We see that as an understandable area of focus the last 20 years, because the science is fairly settled and we're not having to catch people up," Lyles said. "In the earlier days people were talking about working to stave off climate change, but once Hurricane Katrina hit (in 2005), you could see the writing on the wall clearly."
A study of U.S.-based programs found those offering a full course on climate change nearly doubled from 2010 to 2023 and that such courses were found across the country in both traditionally red and blue states.
A third, binational study aimed to identify the kinds of climate change-related content delivered in accredited planning programs in the U.S. and Canada and gather insight on what factors can facilitate or impede the subject in curriculum. Program directors and faculty members surveyed on the topic indicated that more than 60% of programs have semesterlong elective courses on climate change, followed by required courses on climate change modules. Respondents also indicated they focus more on teaching adaptation than climate mitigation and that faculty and students most often advocated for teaching the topic than administrators, alumni or prospective employers.
Taken together, the three studies show that American and Canadian urban planning programs are increasingly addressing climate change as a central topic in education. Most include it in preexisting and often elective courses. Programs also often struggle in how deeply to cover the subject and how to apply it across areas of planning. There also tends to be more focus on adaptation in planning than on mitigation or incorporating resilience into community planning.
"We don't believe you should be able to come out of a planning program without addressing climate change," Lyles said. "We expect that there should be a standalone course on climate change but that we also need to work on how it will be part of all realms of urban planning education."
The authors include a list a recommendations:
- Requiring core climate change courses in planning education and practice.
- Tracking if and how accredited planning programs comply with requirements for climate change as part of core curriculum.
- Increasing opportunities for cross-program and cross-national exchange on teaching the topic in planning.
- Expanding perspectives beyond traditional approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate impacts to more centrally include equity and justice in transformative planning.
- Leading by example to communicate the urgency of mitigation and adaptation and to integrate the issue into existing classes.
Lyles said addressing the topic, especially with young people who will be the next generation of planners, may be practically and emotionally difficult, but is necessary for the profession to address. Future planners will be tasked with deciding how community assets are deployed and cities are designed to withstand the increasingly severe effects of climate change.
"We found little focus on asking, 'How do you talk to young people whose relative contribution to the problem is negligible and have been constantly told the world is struggling?' How do we teach them about the issue? Despondency is rarely a good motivator," Lyles said. "We're trying to train planners to do what's right and lead community conversations. That takes a lot of emotional intelligence. There are a lot of hard things to talk about, and we're not doing that well enough."
