Interdisciplinary urban planning courses: Learning about contexts and wicked problems

Urban planning concerns almost all the activities that occur in a city, and
it has over the past few decades become a more interdisciplinary and in-
teractive expertise. At the same time, the problems that urban planners
deal with have become increasingly complicated. It is quite obvious that
no disciplinary-specific degree programme can offer all the competencies
and knowledge needed today in urban planning practices. Consequently,
urban planning education at the Tampere School of Architecture has been
designed to increase students’ interdisciplinary skills. If and how they may
help the students to confront so-called wicked problems related to urban
planning are the questions scrutinised in this article. In any case, I ar-
gue here that students of urban planning should first learn to understand
the contexts of urban planning (Learning II) and, more importantly, then
learn to transform them (Learning III).

The empirical part of the article is based on student feedback and
my personal experiences gained from four different urban planning
courses and their nine interdisciplinary implementations during the years
2014–2021. Most of the implementations have dealt with planning of a
complex urban area. Invited teachers from various disciplines at Tampere
University, as well as visiting professionals from municipalities and other
organisations, have shared their knowledge on the courses. Also, students
from other degree programmes, such as sociology, psychology, civil engi-
neering, literature studies, knowledge management, electrical engineering,
environmental engineering and biotechnics, as well as regional sciences
and environmental politics, have participated in the courses and collabo-
rated with the students of architecture.