19 Specializations, Faculty Interest, and Courses in Physical Planning Subjects at Graduate Planning Schools Gary Pivo Abstract This article describes the level of physical planning educational activ- ity at graduate schools of city and regional planning. The major find- ings are (1) in many schools, special- izations in physical planning subjects are unavailable; (2) there are a large number of schools at which faculty are not interested in many of the subjects; and (3) between 36 percent and 91 percent of the schools do not offer courses in various physical planning subjects. The general conclusion is that even though physical planning sub- jects can be studied in a number of planning programs, many schools are not particularly active or have nearly abandoned activity in the physical planning area. Dr. Pivo, AICP, is an Assistant Professor of Ur- ban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, a Washington State Public Policy Fellow, a Resource Faculty Member at The Ever- green State College, and a practicing planner. His planning degrees are from Cornell and Berkeley. 0 Introduction In 1987 the author of this paper argued in a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) that research and education in physical planning subjects have been &dquo;nearly abandoned by many of the major schools of city and regional planning&dquo; (Pivo et al. 1987). It was argued that planning students are not being adequately pre- pared to deal with many of the problems faced by prac- ticing planners, that a lack of physical planning research has weakened the development of the field, that it has become difficult to recruit new faculty members inter- ested in physical planning subjects, and that this is threatening to weaken the effectiveness of city planners in their most traditional area of responsibility. At the same conference a &dquo;battle for the profession&dquo; began with David Sawicki’s farewell address as Presi- dent of ACSP which was concerned to a large degree with the future of planning practice in general and the &dquo;balance between our traditional concerns with the physical environment and the social concerns we adopted in the early 1970s&dquo; (Sawicki 1988; Weiss 1988; Birch 1988; Kaufman 1988). The purpose of this paper is to present empirical find- ings on the level of physical planning educational activ- ity in North American graduate schools of city and re- gional planning. It is intended to strengthen the factual basis for the ongoing discussion of the role of physical planning in the future of city and regional planning education. Two caveats should be stated at the outset. This article is not intended to resolve the issue of what the balance should be between physical and nonphysical planning subjects or indeed whether such a distinction is even possible. That is both a normative and empirical issue of practice and theory that goes well beyond the scope of this article. In addition, the focus on so-called physical