Cinema-Based Planning Education: Identity, Emotional Literacy, and Democratic Imagination

Planning education increasingly faces pressure to produce technically proficient graduates while neglecting humanistic capacities essential for justice-oriented practice. In this Viewpoint we argue that cinema-based pedagogy offers a powerful corrective, cultivating three capacities in students: planning identity, emotional literacy, and democratic imagination. Drawing on thematic analysis of student reflections from two undergraduate courses in Spring 2025, we demonstrate how structured film engagement prompted students to see cities as sites of power and inequality, feel them as emotional and ethical landscapes, and imagine them as spaces of democratic possibility. Cinema, we argue, is a legitimate and transformative pedagogical tool for 21st-century planning education.