Information about being an urban planner? Colleges? Typical daily life? (market, schools)

[futureurbanplanner]

So, if anyone couldn't tell already, I want to grow up and become an urban planner. I love learning about cities, reading about them, everything! Especially cities in the west/southwest where growth is high. I plan to go to college for it after I graduate high school (2 more years). Does anyone know good colleges for it? There are lots that offer degrees for it but which are the best?

And, what about being an urban planner or having an occupation close to that? What's it like? What's a typical day working for you? Salary? Any answers help!

Thanks.

[davecj]

As a counterpoint, you may want to look into real estate development as well. Urban planners build paper cities, developers build actual cities.

[jobaba]

Originally Posted by futureurbanplanner

So, if anyone couldn't tell already, I want to grow up and become an urban planner. I love learning about cities, reading about them, everything! Especially cities in the west/southwest where growth is high. I plan to go to college for it after I graduate high school (2 more years). Does anyone know good colleges for it? There are lots that offer degrees for it but which are the best?

And, what about being an urban planner or having an occupation close to that? What's it like? What's a typical day working for you? Salary? Any answers help!

Thanks.

I am not an urban planner by profession, but I do have an urban planning degree and briefly considered entering the profession.

1) Currently, the entry level degree for Urban Planning is a Masters. That is my degree. to say the market is not spectacular is an understatement. But many if not most of my classmates were able to find jobs in planning.

2) Urban Planning education is a huge field. The main components at most schools are Community Development, Physical Planning, Transportation Planning, and Environmental Planning. From your post, you sound interested in physical planning.

3) Like most professions, what you do on a daily basis is not what you imagine. Mostly, physical planners design projects which their clients give them. For instance, you might be designing a mixed use area around a train station. You might draw and plan out some very nice streetscapes, building types, and open space. And that project will likely never get off the ground. You might design a park or a waterfront redevelopment that might actually happen, but you might not get that much input, because you are catering to clients and stakeholders and the public.

4) Pay is OK. Crappy at first. Maybe 30-35K to start. Close to 50K if you live in a high cost area and are lucky. But the most important thing is competition. There is a lot of it for planning jobs. You can climb to some fairly high salaries in planning director positions, but the competition for those jobs is fierce.

This might sound on the grim side, but I assume you are a student. Most jobs have a grim side. I think the pluses of planning are that it is a low stress job where you will really enjoy what you are doing on certain days. The negatives are that the jobs are scarce and competition is high and you are not always doing tangible work, i.e., your designs and Master Plans aren't being implemented.

Keep in mind, this is coming from somebody on the outside, but as close to the outside looking in as you can get.

[grmi66]

Pick another major and/or minor to fall back on. Like some of the other posters have said, a master's degree is a minimum to get hired. Twenty years ago when I got my B.A. degree I did the math and it just did not pencil out in my favor to keep going for my master's. So was able to spin my degree into a career in sales & marketing where my demographic skills came in handy.

Used to tutor other urban planning students and one of the guys I tutored had an interesting career path lined up. He had worked at Wal-Mart since he was a high school student. Told me that Wal-Mart has their own planning & development department and he contacted them. They gave him an interview and said he had a position waiting for him once he graduated. Because he had worked in a store for almost 5 years it gave him the inside track. There are other retail chains as well that hire urban planners to help them decide where to locate stores.

[lurtsman]

Want to be an urban planner. Have a daddy with connections, or marry into them. The number of people that want the job is vastly larger than the number of jobs. Normally that would mean low wages and high competition, but in the absence of a properly functioning free market as envisioned by Adam Smith, it instead means that they will be chosen with no regard to talent as someone's daddy makes a call.

Good luck.

[jobaba]

Originally Posted by lurtsman

Want to be an urban planner. Have a daddy with connections, or marry into them. The number of people that want the job is vastly larger than the number of jobs. Normally that would mean low wages and high competition, but in the absence of a properly functioning free market as envisioned by Adam Smith, it instead means that they will be chosen with no regard to talent as someone's daddy makes a call.

Good luck.

It's not exactly that bad.

It takes 2 years to get a Masters in Urban Planning, but to get a real job, the 'education' is actually longer. What happens is that you will need to find a low paying internship and hope that outfit hires you afterwards or gives you some experience so that you can get hired.

I'd say that within two years from graduation, a large majority of my classmates were able to get into full time planning positions in locations desirable to them. They probably make between 45-65K.

If you want to be a planner, then just do it. Entry level jobs are definitely possible to get.

Of greater concern to me was career trajectory and how well I would fare in the profession. My personality and skillset is not quite cut out to succeed in that field. There's a lot of smooth talkers and strongly opinionated people in planning. It's quite close to law practice in terms of some of the personalities it attracts. As a matter of fact, going the way of an Urban Planning Masters has in recent recent years become a alternative to law school.

[futureurbanplanner]

Thanks for answers everyone! They're really helping me out!