The RTPI’s 2026 to 2028 Research Strategy

Empower 2030: The RTPI Strategic Plan, published in 2025, highlights the central role that planning research plays in the RTPI’s mission to champion the profession:

“We champion the planning profession and nurture a community where we share expertise, research, and knowledge. Consistently forward-thinking and always authentic, we inspire, lead, support and protect the profession and all our members globally. We are equally passionate about educating the public and informing debate regarding the important role planners play in our society.”

Our legitimacy as a professional body is underpinned by our status as a Learned Society - and that requires an effective approach to commissioning, conducting, and enabling research.

We will therefore publish and support research which:

• Promotes planners and planning as a means of addressing economic, social and environmental challenges;
• Advocates for or demonstrates the value of planning practice and research within the UK, Republic of Ireland and globally; and
• Supports learning and improvement in planning practice, education, and skills.

Building on the RTPI’s 2022 to 2024 Research Strategy

Over the last four years, the 2022 to 2024 Research Strategy has provided a valuable framework for the RTPI’s research-related work. This framework has helped us to conduct and publish impactful research on topics from biodiversity, to international new towns, to energy planning.

Going beyond our own research, Planning Research Matters, now its third year, has become widely known as a platform for our Planning Schools’ best scholarship, while Planning Theory and Practice is well established as one of the most highly-regarded planning-related academic journals in the world. And our research grants programme  has grown in prestige, along with the RTPI Awards for Research Excellence.

But a lot has changed since 2022, both for the RTPI and in the wider world. In the UK and elsewhere, the pace of planning reform shows no sign of letting up. Neither does the pace of technological change, or global political uncertainty. Meanwhile, as we argue in Planning for the Climate Crisis, climate change remains society’s greatest challenge. Planning and planners must play a central role in our response to these deeply interconnected issues, and it is vital that our research equips them to do so.

The critical role of planners in a changing world is recognised by Empower 2030: The RTPI Strategic Plan. This was published in 2025, along with the RTPI’s new brand. The brand has brought a new look to the organisation, but also a renewed voice - one that is straightforward, personable and optimistic. This is captured in the principles below.

How RTPI members and planning academics’ views shaped this strategy

A new voice, new corporate priorities and a changing world have shaped this strategy and its principles. But so too have our members views. Indeed, RTPI members were invited to share their perspectives via an extensive engagement process.

As well as inviting written input from all members, the Practice and Research team ran workshops with all relevant RTPI committees, the English regions, the UK nations, and the Republic of Ireland. We also gathered the views of the planning research community, via workshops with academics working in RTPI-accredited planning schools, the Planning Schools Forum, RTPI Partnership Board, and an international roundtable at the 2025 Association of European Schools of Planning congress.

Across the engagement process, three themes stood out more than any others:

1. The pace of change that planners are experiencing means that the RTPI’s research needs to be both responsive and ahead of trends;
2. There is a general lack of awareness of the RTPI’s research, even  among its intended ‘end users’, and despite its quality; and
3. Members restated the importance of the RTPI’s role in enabling academic research to be relevant to practice, but also  emphasised the importance of highlighting and enabling high-quality research being done within practice.

Guiding principles

This 2026 to 2028 Research Strategy updates the previous 2022 to 2024 Research Strategy. Its new ‘guiding principles’ will shape all our research activities, including the research we publish, how we disseminate it, how we will work across the RTPI or with members, how we make the most of the RTPI’s key research-related assets, and how we position ourselves in the broader research community. There are four:

1. Be future-facing: Our approach to research will seek to get ahead of, and shape, important trends as they emerge

One of the most consistent themes to emerge across our engagement workshops was the rapid pace of change in planning and wider society. The RTPI has a responsibility to help its members navigate this flux.

This demands a proactive and forward-looking approach from our research, which helps members to foresee, understand, and then influence future trends. Sometimes this will require us to conduct research into issues which are not yet pertinent. It may also require investment in forecasting and horizon scanning.

In any case, our relatively limited resources and the length of the research process suggest that seeking to anticipate and influence future trends, rather than responding to them once they have happened, will often be a more efficient way of achieving impact. This may be particularly true when the research is intended to feed directly into our policy and practice ‘pipeline’.

Both our engagement processes and previous research (such as our 2019 project Serving the Public Interest) have identified a sense of being unable to plan properly for the future - or of being ‘on the back foot’ -  as a key barrier to planners’ ability to deliver for the public interest day-to-day.

Finally, a forward-looking and positive tone that provides a sense of agency and empowerment is in line with the RTPI’s new brand, which emphasises optimistic communication.

2. Convene diverse voices: We will focus on the RTPI’s unique strengths - particularly our ability to convene a diversity of voices around key issues

During our engagement exercise we asked members what they felt the RTPI’s key strengths are in relation to research. We want to maximise our effectiveness by focusing on these strengths, with a key question being: ‘what can we do which no one else can do?’.

One strength came across particularly strongly. This is our capacity to convene a diversity of voices and perspectives around shared concerns.

This diversity certainly  encompasses ‘diversity’ in its broad sense, in relation to ‘equality, diversity, and inclusion’ (see the RTPI’s CHANGE Action Plan). But, for the RTPI, it particularly  relates to our members’ and stakeholders’ subject expertise, sectoral or organisational perspectives, and the views of the practice and research communities.

The RTPI also has the power to bring together different regional, national, and international perspectives via our International Strategy, through close work between the RTPI nations and the English regions, and via our accredited planning schools around the world.

Very few organisations have the scope or the convening power to bring together such varied voices in the research they do or disseminate – let alone from within their own membership. We do. And it will help us to identify and answer the critical planning research questions of the day.

3. Harness research in practice: We will harness and nurture the ‘research culture’ within practice.

One of our core objectives is to ensure that the RTPI, and the planning schools, continue to produce research of value to practicing planners and decision makers. Planning Research Matters and our own research, awards, and grants are our key tools for enabling and rewarding this, and through our convening power (see above) and dissemination activities (see below) we will provide bridges for this work.

But it is also important to foster, within practice, an understanding of the value of more academic, critical or theoretical research. This research often provides thought leadership on the key issues of tomorrow. It also asks those critical, ethical and reflexive questions about the profession’s place in the world that underpin the RTPI’s status as a professional body and learned society whose wider legitimacy depends on its pursuit of the public interest.

So, there is work to be done  not just in ensuring that we produce, as a discipline, high-impact research,  that  is effectively disseminated, but also in ensuring that practitioners value this kind of work. Effectively linking practice and research requires the development of both supply and demand.

At the same time, during our engagement process many of our members were keen to highlight the very valuable planning research being done outside academia  as a fundamental part of practice - whether to inform evidence bases for plans, to shape service delivery, or to influence others’ politics and policy making.

By harnessing and nurturing the research culture that is already present within practice, we can both highlight its contribution to the discipline, and ensure decision makers are well-informed and reflexive in their work.

4. Design-in dissemination: We will plan for, and take advantage of, opportunities for more research impact and dissemination whenever possible

Across all our workshops, one of the most prominent themes was a lack of awareness of the RTPI’s research outputs. While the marketing and communication of our outputs is extremely important, this lack of awareness was often because mechanisms for disseminating research were not always built into our research projects and commissions from the start.

In contrast, this 2026 to 2028 strategy will ensure that impact-related activities like launch events, workshops, and practice advice are a planned key part of research commissions from the start. We will also consider how follow-up projects and additional funding can put high-quality research more directly into the hands of users, and maximise the value of research that has already been published. Being responsive, and able to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities for impact when they arrive, will also be crucial.

Both of these pathways to impact – the strategic and the tactical - will need to be geared towards audiences’ specific needs and carefully costed. A new ‘Impact Fund’ will enable both.

Finally, this drive to design-in impact and dissemination aligns with and reinforces the new brand and tone of voice, which is direct, inspiring and personable.