Planning Education in the United Kingdom: Impacts of COVID-19 and Future Scenarios

This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped planning education in the United Kingdom and what this transformation implies for future delivery models. Drawing on a phenomenological approach, it presents findings from forty-one semi-structured interviews with planning academics and leaders of professional bodies across the United Kingdom, offering the first U.K.-wide empirical account to capture both academic and professional perspectives across the full pandemic cycle. The findings show that, despite significant challenges related to workload, digital inequality, and the loss of embodied studio and fieldwork experiences, academics demonstrated resilience and pedagogical innovation. The pandemic acted as a catalyst for rethinking teaching, assessment, and student engagement, revealing both the limitations of fully online provision and the pedagogical potential of hybrid models. The study extends existing planning education literature by clarifying how hybrid delivery can support core planning pedagogy, while highlighting the institutional, market, and professional factors shaping its future adoption.