Career: Urban and Regional Planners
It’s a hot day, and you wish your town would hurry up and build that pool everyone keeps talking about. But where should it be built? What land is available? How will people get there? How would building it affect the local wildlife? What do you say to neighbors who worry about noise and traffic? As an urban or regional planner, it would be your job to help the town answer all of these questions -- and many more.
As the nation’s population grows, so do our cities and suburbs. Planners play a key role in managing that growth. They help keep communities safe, livable places and work to improve them.
Urban and regional planners help communities decide on the best use of land. They find places to build homes and businesses, deal with transportation issues, and study the environmental effects of possible projects.
Did You Know?
- Overcrowding is a problem faced by most cities. The 2001 census found that there were almost 27,500 people per square mile squeezed into Kolkata (Calcutta), India.
Are You Ready To...?
- Make important decisions
- Defend your ideas to people who disagree with them
- Spend a lot of time at meetings, even outside of regular work hours
- Work within budgets and state and local laws
- Keep learning as laws and community needs change
- Travel to different work sites
It Helps to Be...
A creative, organized problem solver. Urban and regional planners make decisions that affect a lot of people, so it helps to be a good listener who is willing to hear the ideas of others.
Make High School Count
- Pay attention in math and upgrade your computer skills: you’ll be using computers a lot to construct models and crunch numbers.
- Take full advantage of English, speech, and drama classes: you’ll have to address audiences and discuss your ideas at meetings.
- Get a taste of the way towns and cities work with a job or an internship in local government.
Did You Know?
- The subway was born in London in 1863.
Outlook
Government economists expect jobs for urban and regional planners to grow faster than the average for all careers through 2016. As growing communities realize their need for professional planners, new jobs should become available.
Compensation
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the average salary of urban and regional planners in 2006 was $58,940.
