Strategic planning is a dynamic, analytical, and interdisciplinary process. It encapsulates the principal mechanisms whereby planners understand, create, and care for, places and addressing the core challenges and opportunities faced by urban environments and their communities – both existing and future. Strategic spatial planning within the university classroom is where the practical, applied nature of the discipline is critically interrogated through a more conceptual, theoretical and critica lens. The key drivers of change within our cities, for example housing supply and affordability, urban renewal, urban justice, infrastructure and transport, are unpacked, and the tensions that shape how decisions get made – or not – understood through the complex lens of urban governance and how planning – and planners – engaged with those we plan for. As planners we are interested in the inherently spatial dimensions of these urban processes, recognising that collective efforts to influence land use change and behaviours of urban stakeholders take place at different geographical scales, and impact on different groups in different ways.