Integrated Planning Approaches in higher Education: Collaborative Educational Prototype towards Integrated Approaches in the Planning of Inclusive, People-centric and Climate-resilient Cities

The InPlanEd project was initiated to address a critical gap in higher education curricula: the absence of integrated, transdisciplinary approaches to planning climate-resilient, inclusive, and people-centric cities. Despite the rising importance of sustainability and integrated planning in European policy agendas (e.g., New European Bauhaus, Green New Deal), most academic programs treat urban planning, mobility planning, participatory processes, and evidence-based decision-making in isolation. Furthermore, there is a lack of innovative, collaborative, and intercultural educational frameworks that bring together these fields. The project also responds to the urgent need for upskilling both students and professionals with green, digital, and interdisciplinary competencies to support the Sustainable Development Goals (especially SDGs 4, 11, and 13).

The overarching objective was to develop a transferable, innovative educational prototype—a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) course—on integrated planning approaches for climate-resilient and inclusive cities. Key specific objectives included: # Bridging the competency gaps in the multidisciplinary field of climate-resilient planning. # Development of didactic material and open educational resources for integrated approaches to utilize their complementarity on addressing the complex urban challenges. # Curriculum innovation to introduce a transferable collaborative, and international course targeting HED students and practitioners in the multidisciplinary field of planning. # Guidelines and pathways on creating and implementing a COIL course on integrated planning. # Improve the transdisciplinary competences of educators and learners, crucial for integrated planning approaches towards inclusive, climate-resilient and people-centric cities, . # Push for collaborative and innovative international educational concepts towards integrated planning approaches for sustainable cities.

The project delivered several impactful and transferable outputs: # Competency profiles and curriculum analysis highlight gaps in planning education across Europe. # A MSc-level COIL course, integrating urban planning, mobility planning, participatory planning, and evidence-based planning. # Open-access educational materials, including presentations, videos, case studies, glossaries, datasets, and literature. # An Open learning platform (Moodle-based Helios), functioning as both a course hub and an open-access resource repository. # Guidelines for developing a MSc-level COIL course on integrated planning. # Trained learners who completed the full course -28 HED students and 1 practitioner- were awarded ECTS and certificates, respectively # Two international and five local multiplier events, reaching a wide audience across academia, public authorities, and civil society. # Strengthened transnational cooperation and interdisciplinary networks across Greece, Cyprus, and pan-European (since AESOP is a pan-European network of planning schools).