Planning Education: Let's Forget It for Civil Engineers

Civil engineers interact with planners at various levels and should, arguably, have some formal training in that discipline. The arguments against such formal training are: (1) Today's civil engineering students are regularly being exposed to broader viewpoints and there is no explicit need for courses in planning; (2) few civil engineering programs could offer a planning course per se; and (3) or most, the differences between planning and civil engineering are distinct and should be maintained. In summary, another discipline's educational task should not be usurped; planning educators should teach planning to the planners and to the engineers who would be both, while engineering educators should teach engineering to the engineers and to the planners who would be both.