Author:

Keywords:

Planning ecology, Public space, Urban project, Social heritage

Abstract:

This paper traces the etymology of the case in continuing professional education (CPE), restoring its historical societal roots, and discusses advantages which an integrative approach offers to planning education, to the urban planning practice and urban development in general. The narrative is drawn from the initiative of a multidisciplinary team of practitioners and scholars in the fields of planning, architecture, landscape architecture and transport engineering. The project RADI RIGU! – a number of innovative workshops undertaken in 2011/2012 - actualized the role of urban public spaces in social revitalization processes, the communicative and procedural character of the urban project. It made an effort to place the idea of spatial strategic planning in post-Soviet mindset as well as to elaborate new, more communicative tools and an “emotionally rich language for planning” (Sandercock, 2001). Finally, it introduced an integrated three-dimensional format of continuing professional education, amalgamating lifelong learning, urban action and implementation-aimed outcome. The methodology of the programme is inspired by a series of workshops on public space on the Belgian coast (Schreurs, 2007). It is also based on the reconstruction of the “talka” methodology, the popular form of volunteer work in the USSR. The paper introduces the notion of social heritage and declares its ultimate place in the “ecology of planning” (Schreurs, 2012).