مدل سازی مجدد آموزش برنامه ریزی شهری برای توسعه پایدار: مورد صرب ها Remodelling urban planning education for sustainable development: the case of Serb

Introduction The political changes that Serbia underwent in 2000, followed by the shift to a democratic system of governance and a market economy, as well as the country’s renewed openness toward Europe and the world, all brought about fundamental changes to the framework in which spatial development action can be taken. The new socio-economic context altered the understanding of the key pillars of sustainable development and led to changes in the notion of spatial intervention and, consequently, in professional approaches to spatial and urban planning. This left the field wide open for the creation of new knowledge and the education of a cadre of professionals able to rise to the complex new challenges posed in practice in a country undergoing transition. Although a new framework for professional action was created, the basic preconditions for the new planning system to operate remained absent, and consequently, essential changes to the actual practice of urban planning did not occur. An important aspect of this issue is the traditional urban planning education (UPE) within the framework of architecture studies. This means that urban planning practice is traditionally rooted in technical disciplines and oriented toward engineering knowledge and does not recognise the need to incorporate learning from social and environmental sciences. The paper generally deals with the role of academia in improving urban planning in Serbia through the establishment of an innovative master’s degree programme in line with the requirements of contemporary global planning practices and key competences for sustainability. It particularly addresses the issue of how the production of final master’s degree projects, organized as an integrated platform for dialogue, can enhance the capacities of the broader professional community, placing specific emphasis on re-examination of the role of the profession in spatial development, the reach of its actions and outcomes that ought to be produced. The teaching process focused on the education of a new generation of experts enabled to act in a new socio-economic context, and the essential creation of preconditions for change to the planning paradigm within the community of practitioners, government officials, local communities and teachers. The paper will first discuss the concept of UPE for sustainable development (UPESD) in relation to the contemporary understanding of UPE and the requirements of education for sustainable development (ESD) and will then contextualise this concept to the conditions that prevail in post-social transitional countries (PSTCs). This will be followed by a presentation of the pedagogical model (PM) for UPESD tailored to the conditions of PSTCs and an examination of the results of its implementation through a comparative overview of the processes of producing of final master’s degree projects by three generations of students. Finally, the results of the application of the PM will be discussed, and general conclusions will be drawn.