Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the Planning Accreditation Board (PAB) – I hope the information on this website is of interest and use to you. PAB currently accredits university programs in North America leading to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in urban and regional planning. It plays an important role in promoting excellence and continued improvement in planning education, thanks to the support of its three sponsoring organizations – the American Planning Association (APA), American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), and Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).

In the post-pandemic reality, a vision for planning is necessarily situated in the critical issues of our time: climate change, social and racial justice, and population ageing, to name a few. There is a new sense of urgency for planning students, educators and practitioners to (re)imagine the ways in which people and communities live, work, move, and interact, responsibly and sustainably. Planning programs are poised to be a fertile ground for the training of leaders and change-makers who connect their expertise within the larger public sphere to effect change. This calls for collective, creative thinking about what planning academy and its curricula should be in order to position our students well for the evolving roles of planners.

Recognizing planning education is a broad and diverse field, PAB’s role is firmly supportive: ensuring programs meet minimum standards of educational quality, introducing standards to stay on top of evolving trends (as we have done with the new 2022 Standards), embracing principles of inclusion to increase the diversity of planning students and faculty, encouraging a spirit of exploration in curriculum development, and sharing innovative practices in academic settings. I would like to invite you to connect with PAB so that we can think together about how we can integrate in a timely fashion new knowledge bases, skills, and tools into planning education and how the core competencies and values planning programs excel at can spread into emerging practice areas.

Weiping Wu
PAB Chair

December 6, 2022

PAB Fall 2022 Report to Sponsoring Organizations