Public finance in planning education and practice

Planners have significant influence on the fiscal landscape of communities through the day-to-day decisions they make and the plans they implement. To better understand how our educational system addresses fiscal issues in the training of planners, the author surveyed planning instructors from across the United States and Canada and analyzed a series Of public finance course syllabi. This article presents the results of this analysis and contrasts the planning instructor survey results with the results of a national survey focused on practicing planners. In this second survey, planners were asked to provide their perspectives on the importance of public finance to effective planning. Taken together, the survey results provide air interesting picture of the significance of public finance to planning academics and practitioners. This research is intended to assist planning programs in evaluating their curricula for attention to public finance and the needs of the planning profession.