Educating for Urban Social Work

The development of programs pitched towards collaboration between urban planners and social workers is apparent in several universities in the USA. Less so has this been an element of education and training in Australia or in Europe. This chapter draws on a case study of an urban design project conducted by social work and landscape architecture students in a public housing estate. It evaluates how these students undertook and tackled a joint social planning task and identifies their respective contributions. It highlights the common traditions, evolution and intersections of both disciplines and considers the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. The chapter and points to key issues for curriculum development in social work and urban planning. The project highlights ideas of influencing policy in the local state and themes of consultation, participation and representation. The chapter concludes with suggestions for social workers to become more engaged in fostering inclusion and particpation in impact assessments, consultation exercises, social surveys and demographic mapping. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.