<p>This commentary interrogates the widening divide between urban planning and urban design, arguing that separation is neither inevitable nor professionally benign. While planning emerged from spatial and design-based visions such as Garden Cities of To-Morrow and Toward a New Architecture, contemporary planning education and practice have shifted toward procedural, managerial, and socio-economic concerns, marginalizing three-dimensional spatial competence. Reviewing developments from postwar planning theory to Congress for the New Urbanism and complexity theory-based approaches, the paper highlights the limited reintegration of design thinking into planning curricula. The Israeli case illustrates how institutional arrangements reinforce professional antagonism between planners and architects and contribute to unsatisfactory urban form. Drawing on complexity theory, the commentary proposes a transition from land-use map-based regulation to rule-based planning frameworks that integrate social, economic, and spatial considerations. Such a transition requires educating planners and designers who can easily understand one another and cooperate in shaping urban form through articulating spatially sensitive planning rules.</p>