Careers in Urban Planning

URBAN PLANNING IS A CAREER WHOSE TIME has come. The concept of urban planning, or regional planning, has been around for centuries but only in recent years has the need for planning become so acute that essentially every city, county, state, and some private corporations, all have planners on their payrolls. The simplest reason for this new appreciation for planning is that there are more people but the same amount of land to live on. This requires planning. The more nuanced reason is that people want a different quality of life than their ancestors did. Few people today are willing to be squeezed into the tenement buildings of the past, to live in small spaces, crammed together with neighbors, with little light or air. Many people place a premium on "walkability," loosely defined as the ability to get around and tend to your business without needing a car. The environmentally sensitive want to limit additional development on the urban fringe but still have easy access to parks and other green space near their homes. Historic preservationists struggle to defend the buildings, landmarks, and neighborhoods that define our past. Urban planning is a complex equation filled with many competing interests. This is a good time to be considering a career in urban planning. Job growth is predicted to be steady for the foreseeable future, and academic support for the career through universities and professional associations has never been better.