Transforming Planning Education through More-than-Human Perspectives

Spatial planning is increasingly vital for biodiversity-positive transformations, yet planning education often reproduces epistemic biases that marginalise nonhuman life. Dominant anthropocentric paradigms narrow planners’ imaginations, limiting their capacity to design land-use systems that account for ecological interdependence, justice, and more-than-human agency. This paper examines how planning education can expand its transformative potential by integrating more-than-human perspectives into studio pedagogy.

We present insights from two Master-level studios taught at Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) and Aalto University (Finland) between 2024 and 2025. In both courses, students analysed planning contexts and designed spatial interventions through the lens of nonhuman species, ecosystems and processes – treating them not as passive objects of regulation, but as legitimate “users” with needs, spatial preferences and rights to thrive. The pedagogical aim was to unsettle anthropocentric assumptions and position biodiversity as an active participant in planning. The two studio iterations provided a basis for comparing how students in 2024 and 2025 responded to more-than-human framing when introduced with differing pedagogical approach.

Drawing on reflections from the teaching teams and student surveys, our comparative analysis reveals how more-than-human pedagogies shift values and enhance ecological literacy. To ensure ethical integrity, the study draws exclusively on anonymised, aggregated student survey data collected at the end of both studio years. Students reported a transition from human-centred thinking toward perceiving the planning areas as shared, multispecies environments, evidencing an increased sensitivity to the non-human needs and the complexity of interspecies relations. Exposure to post-anthropocentric concepts prompted students to question ingrained defaults and articulate a growing responsibility for the long-term ecological consequences of design. Notably, students observed that more-than-human lenses began influencing their everyday perceptions of the built environment. However, they also acknowledged the difficulty of sustaining this perspective in professional practice, citing tensions between ecological ethics, existing planning tools, and established professional norms.

Situating these findings within debates on transformative planning and participatory justice, the paper demonstrates how more-than-human education offers actionable knowledge for land-use transitions. The research suggests that even modest pedagogical and curricular adjustments can equip future planners with interspecies awareness, strengthening the ethical grounding, and ecological effectiveness of planning decisions.