WPSC 2026 Helsinki Closing — GPEAN's 25th Anniversary Closing Plenary, "25 Years Behind, 25 Years Ahead"

A viewing record of the closing plenary of the 6th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC 2026), hosted by the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN) on its 25th anniversary.

The 6th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC 2026) wrapped up its five-day program on the afternoon of Friday, July 3, with its closing plenary. The final session was the 25th-anniversary closing plenary of the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN), the organization behind the congress, and it was also broadcast via online streaming. This article is a record based on viewing that streamed broadcast. The point of interest for the day was how the congress's overarching theme, "Peripheral Visions: Rethinking Planning," would be tied together in this final session.

GPEAN — A Network of More Than 500 Planning Schools

The closing plenary opened by revisiting what GPEAN actually is. GPEAN is an umbrella network linking 11 regional and national planning school associations worldwide, today connecting more than 500 planning schools. Prof. Paulo Silva, who chaired the session, said, "The strength of this network is not in the numbers, but in the fact that knowledge flows across borders." Ideas developed in one region spark innovation in another, students go out into the world, and schools become partners.

The Starting Point of 25 Years — Shanghai, 2001

GPEAN's roots trace back to Shanghai in 2001. It began with the 1st World Planning Schools Congress, held at Tongji University. At the time, planning education was fragmented by association, country, and school, with "no truly global conversation" taking place. In a video message, a senior professor from Tongji University who led the founding effort recalled the moment in July 2001 when planning schools from around the world gathered "under one roof" for the first time and adopted the Shanghai Statement. In the early years, the founders built the congress website and the World Planning Education Network (WPEN) themselves, and provided technical support so that schools in Africa and Latin America could establish their own online presence. He left the audience with the words: "Shanghai taught us that planning education faces the same struggles everywhere, and that we are stronger together."

A Relay of Member Associations — Six Congresses, One Journey

A roundtable followed in which representatives of each member association each picked up a chapter of the congress's history. From Shanghai (2001) through Mexico City (2006), Perth (2011), Rio de Janeiro (2016), and Bali (2022) to Helsinki (2026), the six congresses were shown to be not merely a list of host cities, but one continuously growing international community.

APERAU (Francophone) — Prof. Jean-Michel Roux recounted how APERAU, founded in 1984 by six schools, led to the creation of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) in the late 1980s, with GPEAN becoming the cornerstone of a fully international network.

ANPUR (Brazil) — Introduced GPEAN's flagship collaborative publication series, Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning. Launched in 2004, it is soon to reach its 8th volume, having evolved from an early collection of "best papers by association" into thematically curated volumes.

ALEUP (Latin America) — Traced its origins to a 1999 seminar in Caracas, which grew into the 2nd Congress ("Planning for Diversity and Multiplicity"), held in 2006 at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with more than 1,000 participants from over 40 countries.

AESOP — Prof. Andrea Frank recalled the co-authoring, initiated by Bruce Stiftel and Vanessa Watson, of Chapter 10 (on planning education) of the 2009 UN-Habitat Global Report on Human Settlements. That survey confirmed the existence of roughly 550 planning schools worldwide at the time, though their distribution was highly uneven across regions.

ANZAPS (Australia/New Zealand) — A smaller association that hosted the 2011 Perth congress, noting that GPEAN had "amplified the voices of smaller regions that can easily be overshadowed by the dominant US and European schools of thought."

AAPS (Africa) — Dedicated remarks to the memory of the late Prof. Vanessa Watson, the driving force behind the founding of the Association of African Planning Schools. Africa's representative summed up the spirit of GPEAN as "Inclusion, Sharing, and Shaping."

APSA (Asia) — Former chair Setiawan described GPEAN as "a community that lifts up and centers young researchers from the periphery." His personal story—"In Shanghai I sat in the back row; now I stand up here in front"—directly echoed the overarching theme, "Peripheral Visions."

ASPI (Indonesia), TUBOP (Türkiye), ACUPP (Canada), ACSP (North America) — Indonesia recalled hosting the first hybrid congress amid COVID-19 (Bali, 2022) and the tradition of its international student competition; North America (ACSP) noted Bruce Stiftel's inaugural service award and the journal JPER (founded 1981).

The Next 25 Years — Rethinking Planning from the Periphery, Again

The second half of the session was a forward-looking discussion themed "the next 25 years, or at least the next 7." Each continent brought a distinct set of concerns.

Africa — The greatest challenge cited was reinterpreting the perspective of a generation trained in Europe for African contexts. Panelists noted that "most cities are informal, and frameworks imported wholesale from the Global North simply do not work," pointing to urban agriculture as an example of the need for contextualization.

Brazil — Proposed decolonial planning education as the way forward, building on a tradition that runs from participatory planning to land occupation and grassroots planning, and learning from Indigenous peoples and Quilombola (traditional Afro-Brazilian) communities.

Latin America — Argued the field has entered a stage where the issue is "quality, not quantity," emphasizing context-based theory that addresses informality and inequality, along with research that directly affects communities. The 2028 World Urban Forum (WUF) in Mexico City was proposed as a venue for university engagement.

AESOP — Noted that while GPEAN now covers roughly two-thirds of the world's land area, "white spots" remain—such as the Caribbean and the Arab world—and called for further expansion of the network.

Francophone region — Voiced "concern" rather than ambition: as demands for climate transition grow, governments increasingly treat planners as an obstacle rather than an asset, compounded by shrinking public finances, declining faculty numbers, and constraints on academic autonomy.

AI and mobility — Prof. Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes, chair of the GPEAN council, asked whether planning education is prepared for disruptive technologies—curricular standardization to support planner mobility, and agentic AI that is beginning to substitute for zoning and development-permit functions. The closing remark was: "GPEAN is all of us, and since this is a volunteer-run organization, participation is the future itself."

Closing — Thanks, and the Next Congress

The closing remarks were devoted to thanking those behind the congress's organization. Gratitude was extended to local organizing chair Prof. Raine Mäntysalo and lead coordinator Eva, as well as to Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, Tampere University, and the blue-shirted volunteers. Track and session chairs, judges for the international student competition and best-paper awards, and doctoral workshop mentors were also acknowledged by name.

The next congress will be decided through an open call for proposals, with bids especially welcomed from associations that have not yet hosted the congress—including Africa (AAPS), North America (ACSP), Canada (ACUPP), and the Francophone region (APERAU). The question "Where will the 7th World Planning Schools Congress be held?" remains open.

While the world waits for the next congress, member associations' own upcoming schedules were also announced: ACSP (Pittsburgh, October), TUBOP (Istanbul, November, World Town Planning Day), and APSA (Hong Kong, November), followed in July 2027 by ALEUP (Medellín, linked to the ICA regional conference) and AESOP (Birmingham). The book series will continue as well, with Volume 8, Planning for Climate Change (2027), and Volume 9, The Past and Future of Planning Education.

We celebrate not only what we have achieved over the past 25 years, but the community that has sustained it. Here's to the next 25 years.

That is how the closing address ended.

Notes for Seoul

The closing plenary translated the overarching theme, "Peripheral Visions," into the language of organizational practice. Elevating knowledge and context from the periphery to the center—this principle applies equally to methodology and to governance.

Three things stand out from Seoul's vantage point. First, the international standardization trend in planning education and practice (core competencies, an inventory of planning schools) offers a channel through which Seoul's urban planning data and methodologies could enter the frame of international comparison. Second, the moment at which AI and automation are beginning to replace planning functions such as zoning and permitting stands on exactly the same question that Seoul's emerging data- and AI-based support system for living-zone planning is grappling with. Third, the idea of "centering the periphery" translates directly into the language of accessibility equity (N-minute living zones) and urban regeneration.

(WPSC 2026 field report series: Opening and Tapiola site visit → 6/30 Track 1 paper presentation → 7/1 University of Helsinki keynote session → 7/2 Jätkäsaari waterfront regeneration → 7/3 GPEAN closing plenary. This article is a record based on viewing the online streaming broadcast.)