International job swaps amongst planners

By , Wednesday, 10 October 2012, 9 Comments

The Columbia Gorge - an example of the outstanding landscapes and natural environment of Oregon.

The idea of planners exchanging jobs with colleagues in another country to broaden their experience and outlook is an attractive one. I understand that the International Division of the American Planning Association (APA) is looking at ways to facilitate such swaps. I know that there is also strong interest in similar ventures between countries in the Global South, with particular interest here in South Africa, where I am writing this current blog.
My own direct experience of exchanging places with another planner is a long time ago now, but hopefully still has some lessons that might be useful to those seeking to set up such exchanges today.

Once, long ago…

In late 1979 the then head of planning in Eugene, Oregon, John Porter, had some arrangement with his employer that he could have a sabbatical out of the office. He wanted to come to Scotland and contacted planning bodies there, including the Department I was working in, to see if anybody was interested. I was teaching in what was in those days the Department of Town and Country Planning at Edinburgh College of Art / Heriot-Watt University (arguably the longest and most confusing institutional name in the history of planning education!). John was looking to come to Edinburgh and I was excited by the prospect of going to Oregon. He was available from early June to early September. Our summer vacation was late June to late September.

John Porter was a head of planning: I was an academic. I could scarcely go and do his job. Nor could he just step in and do mine: there would be no students around to teach when he came over to Edinburgh. Thus there was some juggling to be done to make the exchange work. I checked with my Head of Department that I could explore the chance of the exchange and that John could have a base in my room in the College.

John and I corresponded by air mail letters – no fax, email, texts, tweets, Skype or Facebook in those days! Basically we fixed for him and his family to come over to Edinburgh before we left for the West. He would have my room in the College and access to the university facilities, e.g. libraries. I don’t recall making arrangements for him to visit practitioners, but he would have been able to get some help from colleagues for that. In turn I would be based in the City Planning Department in Eugene, and be able to sit in on meetings, meet planners in and out of Eugene and generally get an insider’s view of US planning in action.

We also swapped houses and cars. This facilitated the exchange, as we both took families with us. I think John had 3 children, roughly 10-15 at the time; we had an 8 year old boy, a 6 year old girl and 2 year old twin girls. Reflecting back on what we were taking on, in moving such a large and young family so far for so long, I am amazed that we even thought about doing it! Happily, we did not fret, but naively took it on. I found the experience very valuable professionally, and the two older children who can remember their “trip of a lifetime” now live in the USA.

Plannng for cyclists

I used to cycle into Eugene’s Planning office on John’s bike. That enabled me to experience the novelty of Eugene’s system of bikeways at first hand. I was able to write a short article about Eugene’s planning for cyclists, which was published (“How the bike is winning in the west”, The Surveyor, 18 September, 1980, 22-24). At that time there were very few, if any, UK cities thinking about using planning to make cycling safer and more attractive.

I also wrote a couple of short pieces on my impressions for the Oregon Chapter of the APA. I collected a lot of material on a controversial development site in Eugene, with plans to write it up as an article for a refereed journal. However, I got side-tracked on other things when I got back and to my shame and regret I never completed it.

Observing practice

I went to the Planning Department in Eugene more or less every day. I attended the weekly breakfast meetings that the staff. I visited the Oregon state planners in Salem. I went on some site visits, met local environmental activists and greatly appreciated the kindness and hospitality of everyone I met. It was in Eugene that I first saw word processing, and realised how this new invention could transform the way we worked in the university back home. My 10 weeks in Oregon was a very valuable professional experience in every way.
I was beguiled by the wonderful natural environment of Oregon, and the State and National Parks, but less enamoured with the strip development, which was so different from what I was familiar with from Europe. It looks less strange now.

Academic contacts

I visited planning academics in University of Oregon, University of Washington and at Berkeley and University of British Columbia: in both the latter two I already knew people that I had done work with. Meanwhile my son and elder daughter took part in a daily play programme in the local park: he taught the US kids to play “soccer” and she learned how to blow bubbles with bubble gum: cross-cultural, interactive learning.

Beware

Regrets? I have two. First, that our boisterous four children damaged some of the ornaments and furnishings in John’s house. I guess the message is to match up your households as closely as possible: avoid putting your home at the mercy of young kids with negligent parents – or lock away anything you can’t bear to see damaged. Also our 1970s British car proved less reliable than John’s newer, Japanese equivalent – a harbinger for the future of the British auto industry in the 1980s.

The second was that I failed to capitalise on the opportunity that I had. I did not convert my visit into a stream of research, or forge working links with those academics I had met.

Making it work

In summary, exchanges can be a very positive experience, but requireresourcing,  careful planning and focused follow-up. They have to work on many levels and for a wide range of other people, notably the families, colleagues and employers of those who are “changing places”. Certainly today’s information technology makes it much easier to prepare than it was back in 1980. Might it even be possible for the Planning Resource website to set up a page where planners interested in swaps could post their profiles and do some “internet dating”?

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  • Al

    I’m amazed you did so much that summer – and an international exchange in 1980 of that size and magnitude was an impressive feat. Especially with the family in tow.

    • Cliff Hague

      I was chatting about it tonight with friends over dinner and when I said that obviously I could not step in and do the job of head of planning in Eugene, they suggested that instead I should have walked into the office on day 1 and greeted staff with “Right I am here for 10 weeks as Head of Department and things are going to change, I can tell you!”

      On reflection I am also not sure that the family was “in tow”, more “careering off in various directions”…

  • Ian Stevens

    Another insightful post, Cliff. I was fortunate enough to visit Portland, Oregon this summer as part of the Summer School Travelling Scholarship. Coincidentally the theme for the School (and my presentation) was planning for legacy and it was great to see the approach to planning in the region and state. I wish I could go back tomorrow! However, I agree that more could be done to advocate international job swaps and study tours, particularly our links with the US. It’s encouraging too that the APA President is over here soon to deliver the Nathaniel Lichfield lecture.

    • Cliff Hague

      Thanks for your comments Ian. Unfortunately I cannot get down for Mitch’s lecture in London as it clashes with the Annual Conference of the Built Environment Forum Scotland which I will be involved in as Chairman of BEFS. (Theme is Small Towns and it’s in Linlithgow on 20 Nov – book now!). In terms of the bigger picture, the national / provincial leglislation and procedures too often become blinkers for planners. It would be good if some form of exchanges could be managed, but I do think for the idea to really take off it would need some support mechanisms, at the very least providing information and publicising contacts. Meantime, I’ll keep writing this blog in the hope that it helps internationalise understandings of planning and planners. I was in Southern Africa last week and there were calls from RTPI members there for RTPI to do more to promote awareness and exchanges of practice in the Global South. Of course we have the excellent International Development Network newsletter, but aspirations go beyond that.

  • Ros Ward

    I am sure that you are aware, Cliff, that VSO has a current programme of sending qualified and experienced town planners to Zambia. The programme is under the heading of governance and participation aimed chiefly at those who are usually ignored, including women, young people and those with illnesses such as HIV&AIDS.
    I was the town planning advisor in Choma, a municipal local authority located half way between Livingstone and Lusaka. The philosophy of VSO is to share skills but one of the most difficult aspects of my 2 year project was the lack of qualified town planners in Zambia. There were some who had trained at the Copperbelt university and some geography students who had qualified from the university in Lusaka. Very few could find jobs in the public sector due to the dire lack of funding in local authorities. Some graduates found jobs in related fields but I am sure that many went abroad.
    VSO is funding a lecturer from Dundee to put together a course at the university in Lusaka. Other volunteers are providing advise on project management, finance, IT in general and also GIS mapping: all relevant to town planning.
    From my experience I very much doubt that the preparation of an up to date development plan was the most significant use of my skills but I was able to help manage projects on upgrading irregular settlements and on waste management, in particular securing the available funding.
    I returned to the UK in the middle (?) of the downturn and was unable to use the skills I had learnt in the UK setting apart from talking to the RTPI’s IDN and students at Oxford Brookes.
    I really ought to read yor blogs more often.

    • Cliff Hague

      Thanks for these comments, Ros. The situation in Zambia which you describe is rather common, I fear. An up-to date development plan is at least better than an out-of-date masterplan, but “town planning” can easily become reduced to a set of statutory processes, rather than a focus on outputs. Pat Wakely and I tried to explore this gap in the book “Making Planning Work” that was published by Practical Action for the 2006 World Urban Forum. Hopefully Zambia’s young planners will still find an outlet for their skills, but the real vacuum that remains is that the planning profession has not developed a coherent narrative about how to plan, and the desired ends of planning, in situations of rapid urbanisation led by informal developemnt and economic activity.

  • Peter Luder

    Cliff,
    Just catching up with my daily ‘Planning’ read following annual leave, I was interested by your article due to my own experience in Oregon in 1980 – 1982. I had been keen for my university experience to provide me with more than just academic knowledge either in my home city of London or elsewhere in the UK, and had therefore obtained a scholarship to read Geography at University of British Columbia (1976-79). Whilst there I arranged for my undergraduate thesis to be a research report for the City of Vancouver Planning Department – an investigation of the theory and practice of defining a neighbourhood commercial area within major artery commercial strip development so as to correctly focus neighbourhood regeneration funds. This confirmed my interest in planning, but rather than stay at the (very good) UBC School of Planning, I wanted a different experience, and thus found myself at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. – It would appear that you by-passed this institution for its more illustrious West Coast competitors, but had you visited, you would have found the School of Urban Affairs and its associated Center for Urban Studies to be a very practical body linking theory and practice. Firstly, many of the students (all graduates) were in full time work and therefore in the common practice at PSU, many classes were taught during evenings, but the benefit for a full time student such as myself was the experience I gained from fellow students who were working. Secondly the strong links between the Center, which raised funds for the School by research, with Federal, State, and Local Government ensured that research projects were hghly practical. I financed my Masters in Urban Planning via a post as a research assistant at the Center, spending most of my time on an extensive Federally funded joint project with the City of Portland Planning Department, the ‘Portland Transit Mall Impact Study’, which reviewed the impact on the downtown Portland area of the major public transport / environmental improvement project in the city centre. We effectively undertook a post-hoc EIA, to establish whether funding such projects did improve city life and economies. Much of my time was spent working on the project from the Portland City Planning Department office, which was close to the PSU campus. I stayed on 6 months full time after completing my degree to help complete the study, including writing the Summary Report, much like the concluding chapter in an Environmental Statement.
    The point of describing my experience is really to note that in both Vancouver and Portland I found planning departments where I beleive there was much that stood me well in my ultimate career back in the UK, so I do think it quite feasible for a job exchange to be useful and practical (Portland / Oregon had design control, historic district protection, and the equivalent of a Green Belt, in addition to the impact assessment I was involved with). Secondly though, I would warn that in a difficult job environment, (at least in the 1982 /3 recession, on my return), I did not find many English local authority planners had the imagination to see that I had broadened my experience rather than narrowed it by not doing exactly the same as most other planners. Perhaps that has changed now, and in any event, a job should be waiting for the returning exchange planner, but reading Ros’ comment below regarding using skills learned back in the UK, perhaps they have not? I won’t start on the trouble I had with the RTPI having an APA acredited Masters degree, but it was eventually resolved. I have of course spent most of my career in the private sector, where overseas work is seen to be beneficial.

    • Cliff Hague

      Many thanks for taking the time to write such a reflective and informative comment. The situation your describe at PSU sounds very similar to the kind of teaching, learning and research environment I was in when we were the School of Planning and Housing at Edinburgh College of Art / Heriot-Watt University. We ran an undergrad’ planning course that included a compulsory Sandwich Year in Year 3, and a post-grad’ with full- and part-time routes. Thus in Years 4 and 5 of the UG and throughout the PG courses the teaching could draw directly on experiences from practice , and in respect of the PGs, the practice of some of the students had been outside UK. In addition, we were extensively involved in contract research, mainly for the governments in Scotland and England, but also in EU INTERREG projects. These structures create a potentially very rich learning environment for professionals – whether they be students or teachers. I have always believed that planning education should not “prepare students for practice” but rather “prepare students to challenge and lead practice”. For this to work there has to be critical engagement with the practice – if it is just “critical”, or if it is just following / describing / trying to mimic practice, then it is not doing its job, in my view.

      The negative response to your experience from N.America is depressing but, I fear. not unique. I have also seen really able young graduates from our courses who went into practice and were under-valued and discouraged, lost to planning or never achieved their full potential.

      I hope that you have been able to make a return visit to Portland. If not, put it on your “to do” list.

  • julie anderson

    Now a days people are migrating from one place to another place so they are habituated to do any kind of job mostly international jobs.Love such kind of jobs as we know different types of cultures!
    http://www.internationaljobs.in/

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