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Item Open Access Giving Birth to AESOP(2017) Kunzmann, Klaus R.“Giving Birth to AESOP” is a personal retrospective written in 2017 by Professor Klaus R. Kunzmann, one of the founding members of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). The text recounts the foundational meeting held in February 1987 at Schloss Cappenberg, where the idea of creating a European network of planning schools took shape. It highlights the key individuals involved, the symbolic choice of location, and the rationale behind the name “AESOP.” The author reflects on the initial ambitions of the group—such as promoting planning as an academic discipline, fostering transnational exchange, and strengthening the identity of planning education in Europe—and provides a critical commentary on the evolution of planning and its institutional status up to 2017. This document offers both historical insight and a personal vision of planning as a discipline rooted in storytelling, critical thinking, and social responsibility.Item Open Access Introduction - founding conference of AESOP in Amsterdam(Springer, 1987) Faludi, AndreasAs part of its 25th anniversary-celebrations, the Institute for Planning and Demography of the University of Amsterdam hosted the Founding Conference of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) on 19th to 21st November, 1987. The holding of this conference is a sure sign that European planning education has come of age. In the recent past we have witnessed a trend towards independent programmes. But many differences remain, and institutional, cultural and linguistic boundaries hamper a continuous flow of exchange between those with a professional concern for planning education. The Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) aims to im- prove this situation. In taking the initiative, the founding committee has drawn inspiration from the example set by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) in North America. Thus, AESOP will be a plat- form for exchanges and a focus for joint action in the field of European planning education. Also, it will provide mutual support to its members. The conference discussed how to achieve these aims. Also, an immediate start was made with productive exchanges. To introduce the almost one hundred planning educators to the local situation, planning problems of Amsterdam were discussed. The main educational papers were: "The Evolution of Planning Education in Europe" (A. Rodriguez-Bachiller, Senior Lecturer, Oxford); "The Changing Context of Planning Education and Research: An American Perspective" (Professor E.R. Alexander, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee); "Dutch Planning Education: where it is now and how it got there" (Dr. Barrie Needham, Senior Lecturer, Catholic University of Nijmegen); and "Dutch planning education in its international context (Professor A. Faludi, University of Amsterdam). Workshops concerned topics like: "New jobs for planners? The job market" (Convenor Professor L. Albrechts, University of Louvain, Louvain); "Planning fashions. How to respond in planning education and research" (Convenor Professor B. Marchand, University of Paris VIII); "Are we fair to overseas students?" (Convenor Professor Klaus R. Kunzmann, University of Dortmund); "Research education and training: The lonely PhD student?" (Convenor Professor P. Healey, University of Newcastle); "Post-modern planning: Retreat to urban design?" (Convenor: Professor D. Frick, Berlin University of Technology); "For which future do we educate planners?" (Convenor Professor W. Schmid, Zurich University of Technology). Practical issues like the ERASMUS arrangements, a newsletter, the 1988 conference (due to be held at the University of Dortmund), a directory of planning schools and research were also discussed. The papers below are the two Dutch presentations. Both authors have been involved in planning education abroad. Barrie Needham has lectured at various English planning schools, in particular at the University of Aston at Birmingham. He is a one-time president of the Education for Planning Association. Andreas Faludi, too, has lectured in England, at the Oxford Polytechnic, before coming to the Netherlands where he has devoted his Delft inaugural lecture to the topic of "Planning theory and the education of planners".Item Open Access A Giant Contribution to Global Planning Education : Klaus Kunzmann and the Founding of AESOP(Routledge : Taylor and Francis Group, 2017) Alterman, RachelleThe existence of a global academic identity for planning must not be taken for granted. If it weren’t for Klaus Kunzmann, there would have been no AESOP. And if it weren’t for AESOP, today’s global planning education institutions would have not emerged or, at best, have been greatly delayed. The vision that Klaus realized 30 years ago with the founding of AESOP has created a momentum with invaluable benefits not only for planning education, but for the citizen-clients of planning worldwide. Even though I was not representing any European school 1, I sensed that something very significant was in the offing; I therefore travelled to Amsterdam in 1987 to attend AESOP’s inauguration ceremony (and was the only non-European there). I have followed AESOP’s evolution and impact ever since. In this brief note, I would like to share with you what I have observed about AESOP’s contribution to the emergence of planning education globally. Unlike medicine or engineering, for example, planning is not a self-propelling global profession. Medical practitioners are dependent on knowledge transfer about dangers discovered, new medicines, or new technologies. In planning, the gains and losses due to knowledge transfer are more amorphous. In fact, planning has a built-in contradiction between the pull of localization and the push of globalization. On the one hand, planning is locally grounded both in its history and ideology: Historically, the planning profession emerged from local-national initiatives in a geographically fragmented process. Planning ideology seeks to enshrine locally specific “placemaking” as a valued norm. In each country, the planning profession is bounded by its own national and local legal frameworks, and it is embedded in specific socio-cultural and political contexts. The legal and political contexts differ greatly across countries, even when they might seem similar from a distance (Alterman 2017). At the same time, the planning profession cannot continue to serve its clients – the majority of humanity – without global knowledge exchange.Item Open Access Creating AESOP(Routledge : Taylor and Francis Group, 2017) Healey, PatsyAtlanta, Georgia, 1985. We are at the annual conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) in the US, both invited for a special session on developments in planning in Europe. Klaus Kunzmann was already well-known in regional development planning circles. I was only there as a substitute for Mike Batty, who had fallen ill with pneumonia. But both of us felt somewhat alien inside the huge hotel and conference complex, and outside in the centre of the city, where we seemed to be the only people, in our separate explorations, trying to discover the area on foot. It was in this challenging context that we came together. We were both excited by the intellectual energy evident at the ACSP event. Could such an arena be created in Europe, then vigorously building a transnational single market and encouraging professional interconnections? Could this be done not as a reproduction of the ACSP model, but in a distinctive and European way, infused with a deep awareness of the diversity of cultural, economic and political conditions across the continent? We knew that, in Europe, planning systems and practices, and education for these practices, had arisen in several different ways. In several countries, the architectural tradition dominated. In others, an engineering origin was more significant, while in eastern Europe, planning was often strongly linked to urban and regional economics (Rodriguez- Bachiller 1988; Frank 2006). We sought to recognise these different strands, while emphasising the focus on place and spatial relations, on urban and regional dynamics and environmental qualities. Both of us understood the planning field as about the interaction of people and places, and how to enhance place qualities for the benefit of ordinary citizens.Publication Open Access AESOP Statement : The State of Spatial Planning in Europe(AESOP, 1995) Healey, Patsy; Piccinato, GiorgioThis statement identifies key tendencies with respect to urban and regional change at the present time in Europe and the responses to these being developed within the planning field. Europe is by no means homogeneous. There are huge differences between countries and regions, in history and geography, in public policy, attitudes to governance, to cities and the environment. A major task of AESOP is to promote understanding of this diversity and its implications for planning work. There are major changes underway in Europe these days. This can be seen in the economic, environmental and socio-cultural conditions of territories and localities, It is also evident in Europe's political-institutional landscape. This is creating a new context for spatial planning work, and in many countries particularly in Western Europe, a new enthusiasm for planning. One reason for this enthusiasm is the increasing sense that urban regions across Europe are in competition with each other, for private investment and public subsidy. The qualities of places and their institutional capacity to act in a strategic and co-ordinated way seem to be an important factor in that competition. Co-ordination and collabora- tion within urban regions gives confidence to companies moving into a region and helps draw down benefits, or at least mitigate adverse impacts, which companies may generate to the society and the environment of a place. Co-ordinated institutional capacity that can integrate economic, socio-cultural and environmental dimensions of the qualities of places is also emerging as a critical issue for the achievement of strategies for environmental sustainability.