Workshop on Teaching GIS for Planning Students and Practitioners

Introduction

The Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE) together with the Centre of Excellence for Spatial Literacy in Teaching (SPLINT) hosted a one-day workshop on 24 April 2007 in Cardiff to explore the teaching of GIS and spatial analysis in planning degree programmes.

The workshop was specifically for academics that are involved in the teaching provision of GIS and spatial analysis for urban studies, city and regional planning students and planning practitioners (CPD short courses).

The purpose of the workshop was to share information on the current state of GIS education for city and regional planners in the UK, to identify core concepts and operations that educators involved in GIS education for planners feel are most relevant, and to facilitate a discussion of what a model curriculum (or curricula) for teaching GIS and spatial thinking in the UK planning context might contain.

The workshop was facilitated by Nick Tate (Leicester University, SPLINT), Chris Webster and Andrea Frank (Cardiff University, CEBE) and Richard LeGates (Professor of Urban Studies at San Francisco State University). Professor LeGates is the author of Think Globally, Act Regionally (Redlands: ESRI Press, 2005) a textbook for teaching GIS in the social sciences using urban and regional planning materials, and co-author of The City Reader (London and New York: Routledge 3rd edition 2003; 4th edition planned for 2007). He is currently on a research visit to the UK and he will incorporate information from the meeting in a working paper on disseminating spatial thinking to planners in the UK context.

Topics covered in the meeting included:

To what extent are spatial concepts currently included in UK Higher education curricula offering degrees in town and country planning, geography, and related degrees intended to educate urban planners?
What operational skills in the use of GIS and related spatial information technologies are currently taught to planners?
What texts are most commonly used in teaching these courses and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
What are key public domain sources of spatial data that are used in GIS teaching?
What exemplary spatial planning data are available that could/ should be disseminated more widely?
What laboratory exercises do staff teaching these courses use?
How can the teaching of spatial thinking and GIS to UK urban planners be improved?
Should CEBE form a special interest group to promote improved teaching of spatial thinking in education related to the built environment and if so, what should the primary deliverables or activities of the group entail?

Note: Presentations from the day can be downloaded from links in the Programme