Improving GIScience in UK Spatial Planning Education

This SPLINT white paper describes activities of three organisations involved in efforts to strengthen the education of UK urban planners related to spatial thinking and spatial planning: The Royal Town Planning Institute, The Spatial Literacy in Teaching Consortium, and the Centre for Education in the Built Environment. The paper focuses on the relationship between spatial planning and GIScience. GIScience refers to a body of knowledge about the collection, management, analysis, and display of spatial information using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and related spatial information technologies such as remote sensing. This knowledge domain is sometimes referred to simply as GIS or by other names. This paper describes activities of the three organisations and summarises the status of and recent developments related to the teaching of spatial planning in the UK with a particular emphasis on the way in which GIScience is (and is not) currently taught. Finally it suggests ways in which the three organisations might collaborate to strengthen spatial thinking and GIScience skills in UK spatial planning education.