The objective of ISOCARP’s Urban Planning Advisory Teams (UPAT) is to mobilize the extensive planning expertise of our members in order to assist cities and regions with their projects, programs, and policies on spatial planning and urban design. Since 2004, ISOCARP has organized more than 20 UPAT workshops in China, Mexico, Russia, Spain, the USA, Norway, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Singapore. On the invitation of a city or a region, a selected team of 5 to 9 ISOCARP members come together for a week on location for a UPAT workshop.
In this week the Urban Planning Advisory Team visits the location, meet with planning officials, actors and stakeholders, take note of available documents and information and prepare a presentation with their findings and recommendations. In the weeks after this UPAT workshop, the Urban Planning Advisory Team elaborates these findings and recommendations into a professional and often bilingual report.
The UPAT programme is part of the more general strategy of ISOCARP as a worldwide association of planning professionals to stimulate its members to work together on urban and regional planning projects for cities and regions around the world. The Urban Planning Advisory Team always works closely together with local organizations and provide them with guidance, recommendations and practical solutions related to the planning issues.
One of the success factors of the Urban Planning Advisory Teams in the most recent workshop is that both senior and young planning professionals are closely working together. Through the Young Planning Professionals workshops and network, the ‘next generation’ of planners represents a prominent group within ISOCARP that enhances the vitality of ISOCARP as an open, learning and worldwide society of planning professionals.
Discover more about UPAT here.
If you are interested in the achievement of previous UPAT projects, you can read our PLAN Magazines on ISSUU.
For more information, contact Eric Huybrechts, Director of UPAT and ISOCARP Board Member, huybrechts@isocarp.org.
