Articles about AESOP in 2007

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    Viewpoint: AESOP at Twenty: Introduction
    (Liverpool University Press, 2007) Massey, David
    In the mid-1980s, the planning academy in Europe consisted of a range of planning schools with different intellectual traditions, as well as specialist options in courses of architecture, engineering and economics (Rodriguez-Bachiller, 1988). The academics teaching within them were influenced primarily by their national cultures in education and research, as well as by a variety of intellectual traditions. For many, planning was a practice craft rather than a scholarly endeavour. Some published in the academic literature, primarily in economics and geography, but many acted as consultants to government and private bodies. International networks existed, but mainly within separate language communities. Student movement between countries during their educational programme was unusual. It was in this context that AESOP was born. Of course, the wider project of European integration was a major influence and opportunity, but for many of those who gathered for a snowy weekend in Schloss Cappenberg in January 1987 (Fig. 1), invited by Klaus Kunzmann of Dortmund University, the motivation to create an Association of European Schools of Planning was to widen horizons for staff and students, to promote a more international outlook, and, in particular, to advocate a social scientific underpinning for understanding and developing the theory and practice of planning activity. For me, certainly, coming from one of the larger EU countries, I felt that the academic planning community in my country was too small, and its intellectual traditions as yet too weak, to sustain a vigorous community of critical inquiry. Both Klaus and I had experienced the energy of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Congresses of the 1980s, and appreciated the way in which the Journal of Planning Education and Research had been developed. But we also felt that a European association should have distinctly European qualities.