All Rights ReservedSPOTLIGHT on.... AESOP2024-12-102024-12-101993Shaw, D. (1993). AESOP. Planning Practice & Research, 8(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/0269745930872287110.1080/02697459308722871https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459308722871https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/2301Planning Practice & Research, 8 (1)In the mid-1980s planning education throughout Europe was faced with a number of threats and challenges. Some threats were internal to the various nation states. For example in Italy, France, and Spain, planning education, which was beginning to emerge in its own right, was having to face up to the internal pressures exercised by other disciplines, notably the architects and engineers, who, supported by strong, powerful, and wellestablished professional associations, were afraid of losing their position to potentially better qualified planners. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland it was argued that there were signs of academic stagnation and a lack of innovation in the field of planning education, which needed rejuvenating by being opened up to a wider European market. In Britain planning education was emerging from a period of intense rationalisation and was still faced by a government hostile to professional courses and looking to reduce the length of planning programmes. A similar threat of rationalisation was perceived to exist in the Netherlands (Kunzman, 1990). At the same time there was a growing realisation that enormous changes were taking place throughout Europe which were and are having significant impacts on the nature and context of planning practice and therefore, planning education. For example, the pattern of urban and regional development was seen to be increasingly determined by the internationalisation and globalisation of regional and local economies. Such processes were certainly being accelerated by the activities of the European Community, most notably at this stage the Single European Act.enrestrictedAccessArticle43-48