“…The world of planning today is seen by scholarly literature as an exciting, but also a challenging, profession in reference to the political economic framework which is dominated by authoritarianism, neoliberalism, informality, crime, fragmentation, depoliticization, and populism (see Filion, 2011;Gunder, 2010;Kunzmann, 2016;Ponzini, 2016;Ruming, 2018;Tasan-Kok & Baeten, 2011;Thornley, 2018;Sager, 2009;Roy, 2015). Although the practitioner's role is prone to high levels of political and economic pressures in this 'dark' impression, recent studies have shown that there is a tendency among planning practitioners to push boundaries (Forester, 2013;Tasan-Kok et al, 2016;Tasan-Kok & Oranje, 2017) and even to become activists . Furthermore, work with planning students shows that radical critical approaches in planning education may turn into mere cynicism when they do not offer an analysis of problems or offer tools for alternative and emancipatory ideas (Tunström, 2017).…”