Town Planner as Social Scientist: The Case of the LSE Programme

Abstract

The paper originated at an international congress of planning teachers organised by the Association of European Schools of Planning and American Collegiate Schools of Planning in 1991. It aims to offer a straightforward description of the genesis and development of the London School of Economics postgraduate programme in urban and regional planning. Planning at the LSE is unusual in being taught interdepartmentally by the three social science disciplines of economics, geography, and government. Students—whatever their background—must pass in all three subjects. The geographical origin and first degrees of students who have taken the MSc course since its foundation in 1966 are reviewed. The paper ends with an examination of some of the wider implications of the LSE programme philosophy of a nonprofessional, non-design-based, training for town planning, grounded in the social sciences.

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