From Decay to Opportunity: Planning Education as a Means for Reversing the Impacts of Economic Crisis

The course ‘Graduate Studio in Spatial Planning’ is part of the Graduate Programme ‘Urban and Regional Planning’ in the Department of Planning and Regional Development of the University of Thessaly. The course was awarded the 2010 AESOP Excellence in Teaching Prize. This article aims to define and analyse the innovative elements in the pedagogical approach applied in this course. It describes the structure of the course both within the context of planning education in Greece, and within the context of the recent economic crisis and its political and social consequences. It elaborates on the methodology chosen, and tries to justify it by relating it to the objectives of the course. Finally, it attempts a multilevel assessment of the impact of the course on the students who attended it, with regard to their competences to deal with the main task of the project as well as with the various dimensions of the planning process.