Being, becoming and contributing in (and through) Planning

Abstract

The thesis, Being, becoming and contributing in (and through) Planning, provides an overview and reflection on an innovative narrative-based enquiry into personal and professional work-life experiences of planning practitioners. It is aimed at exploring competency development in planning as a future orientated practice, where practitioners are challenged to contribute in complex and adaptive local and global contexts. The enquiry draws on the fields of planning practice, planning education, sustainability leadership, lifelong learning, as well as professional and career development. The quest metaphor was used to stretch the exploration beyond formal professional education and complicated competency development frameworks and models, towards archetypical patterns, probes and paradoxes in complex and highly relational inner and outer growth experiences. In reflecting on that which seem to enable and impel planning practitioners to contribute in their work-life contexts, the enquiry reveals (and once again reminds us of) the potential value and generative capacity in the nexus between personal and relational practice experience of transformative growth, practice excellence and commitment to the unfolding collective future.