13.5 Feet on the Ground Engaging students with political realities By Arnold van der Valk and Gerrit J. Carsjens The strategic choice approach stands students in planning and management with both feet firmly on the solid ground of day-to-day decision-making. Today planners cannot afford to be called dreamers or ivory tower types. They are supposed to come up with proposals that have a chance of acceptance and of implementation. If not, it reduces the limited supply of public confidence. That is why teaching staff of Wageningen University in the Netherlands includes the philosophy and toolbox of strategic choice in the core curriculum for landscape architecture and spatial planning. Since undergraduate courses in planning methodology are open for students in environmental and social sciences, some 25 engineers graduating at Wageningen University yearly have been exposed to the basics of strategic choice since 1999. In the masters curriculum, ‘Planning under Pressure’ is used as a textbook by planning students. Arnold van der Valk has been a full professor in land-use planning at Wageningen University in the Netherlands since 2002. He took a PhD in planning from Amsterdam University with distinction in 1989. He holds an MSc in human geography and an MSc in spatial planning. The emphasis in his scientific work is on planning theory and planning history. His seminal work so far is Rule and Order; Dutch Planning Doctrine in the Twentieth Century, co-authored by Faludi (1994). Gerrit Jan Carsjens is a senior staff member of the Land Use Planning Group at Wageningen University. His educational work focuses at technical and methodological aspects of land-use planning. This includes working with strategic choice in two strategic planning courses, as described in this contribution. His research focuses at the development of decision-support methods using geographical information systems (GIS). Two main projects are: (1) the FAO project on area-wide integration of crop and livestock activities in Southeast Asia and (2) the integration of environmental aspects into local planning procedures in The Netherlands. STRATEGIC CHOICE IN A PLANNING CURRICULUM Strategic choice was introduced by one of the authors who was appointed professor in land- use planning in Wageningen in 1999. He wrote two introductory texts to strategic choice in the Dutch language for undergraduates. The Dutch texts present elementary information about a decision-oriented view of planning, an overview of strategic choice technology and a glossary both in Dutch and in English. The decision-oriented view of planning was developed by Andreas Faludi and Arnold van 21