A DISCUSSION ON THE CURRENT NEEDS OF PLANNING AND THE NATURE OF PLANNING EDUCATION

The dominant literature of democracy, government types, and forms of control have maintained its effectiveness despite years passing on their emergence. Countries that were late to urbanization are experiencing delays in catching these theories and practices. Featured phenomena in the literature expressed are listed as participation, governance, the active role of actor, etc. These phenomena can be reflected in the institutional structure and everyday life at different levels, some of them have a history that extends to mids of the 20th century. Although we can say that these phenomena are relatively internalized in the geographical areas that are prominent particularly in terms of social and economic indicators, their progress in developing countries as in our country is slower. The needs of urban and regional planning profession are open up for discussion in terms of the parent frames mentioned above. This profession area, with its projections in the socio-spatial sense, is faced with the need of renewing itself today as in many other professions. This phenomenon has not emerged today; especially with the 1990s, it is increasingly becoming influential. The tension between the current trends&needs of societies and the traditional structures&actions brings new challenges to the field of planning. The planning process, the planner's attitude and finally educational issues stand as fundamental parts of this quest in the field of planning. Within this perspective, the main aim of this work is to introduce a theoretical discussion on the form of education that fits current needs of planning field. Requirements related to training methods in all fields of design cannot be separated from the practices that lead us to participate in the forms of control. In this study, the inferences regarding planning education are covered after the discussions on the form of control, governance, participation, and planning. It is intended that the study contributes to the literature by discovering the issues that need to be addressed in today’s educational practices