President of the Royal Town Planning Institute visits the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

On a beautiful sunny autumn day, we welcomed the President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Lindsey Richards (FRTPI) to meet with staff and students in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University. She was visiting the North East of England on a two day tour that included sites in Newcastle, Darlington and Morpeth. The President was supported by RTPI NE committee members including Regional Chair Timothy David Crawshaw (MRTPI), who teaches in the school, and APL alumnus Joe Ridgeon (MRTPI).

Lindsey Richards gave a talk to a packed room of students and staff about the future of planning. This presented the role the RTPI will play and painted a positive, but challenging, future for planning in the UK. The importance of young and future planners shone through. When Lindsey was elected as RTPI President in January 2023 she announced her theme for the year that was based on building a pipeline of young professionals, and making planning an early career choice. Her talk centred around this and demonstrated how rewarding a career in planning could be. 

In the same session, APL’s Prof. Geoff Vigar and Dr Abby Schoneboom presented key concepts from their research into Working in the Public Interest (WITPI), which also includes Dr Zan Gunn and teams at Sheffield University and UCL. This created an excellent forum for exchanging ideas and generated questions to the panel from staff, including Prof. Simin Davoudi (FRTPI). 

It was wonderful to see such enthusiasm for planning during the visit from across the School. The RTPI President is keen to engage with university planning students and to pave a way to promote planning as a career to school pupils. Her message is that the UK needs more planners to shape the future of our housing, cities and our built environment - and to do that we need to make planning courses and the profession more diverse. We look forward to collaboration opportunities with Lindsey and future RTPI presidents on creating more inclusive planning education.