Becoming an Urban Planner E-Book

Michael Bayer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 546

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Becoming an URBAN PLANNER

Are you considering a career in urban planning? Becoming an Urban Planner is the best place to start. Through in-depth interviews with more than eighty urban planners across the United States and Canada, this book gives you a valuable insider’s look at your future profession as it is lived and practiced.

Becoming an Urban Planner introduces you to the urban planning profession—its history, what you must know to prepare for a career in planning, and the different types of planning jobs. Beyond the basics, though, it shows you the realities of what it’s really like to be a planner today. You’ll learn about:

• The skills you’ll need and how to hone them in school and on the job
• Potential career paths and what people in these positions do
• Using internships, job shadowing, and other opportunities to break into the field
• Deciding among planning specialties and moving between public and private sectors
• How to search for and get your first position
• Emerging areas in planning, including sustainability and climate change

Each topic is explored through in-depth interviews with both generalists and others who have devoted their careers to a particular aspect of planning. These professionals share their insights and describe how they have arrived at where they are and how beginners like you can learn from their experiences.

With the information from this book to guide and inspire you, you will be able to chart your own path to success as an urban planner.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Other Titles in the Series

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Authors

Preface

Acknowledgments

Personal Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Becoming an Urban Planner: What Planners Do

Employment in Planning

A Young Profession: Planning Emerges in the Late Nineteenth Century

Urban Planning Is about the Future

Urban Planning Is about Place

Urban Planning Is about Helping Other People Make Decisions

The Planning Process

Buyer Beware: Things You Might Not Like about a Career in Planning

What Kind of Salary Can a Planner Expect to Make?

Skills for Becoming an Urban Planner

Chapter 2: Becoming an Urban Planner: Education

What Research Shows about Planners’ Education

Preparing for a Professional Education

Communicating in Words

Communicating through Pictures

Being Comfortable with Numbers

Drawing, Planning, and Urban Design

Picking a College Major

And on to Graduate School

Choosing the Right Graduate Program

Applying to Graduate School

Financing a Planning Education

Planning Curriculum: Knowledge, Skills, and Values

Specializations

Dual-Degree Options

Alternative Paths

Conclusion

Chapter 3: Urban Planner: Experience

Informational Interviews

Job Shadowing

Volunteer Experience

Internships

Cooperative Education

Peace Corps and AmeriCorps VISTA

Networking to Break the Ice

Chapter 4: Planners’ Many Paths

Many Paths into a Planning Career

Who Influenced You?

Where Do You Want to Work?

Planning Timeframes

At What Geographic Scale Do You Want to Work?

What Planning Topics Interest You?

Teaching Others to Become Planners

Challenges and Rewards

Chapter 5: What Is the Future of Planning?

Economic Recession and Planning

Geospatial Technology and Planning

Rediscovering Public Health

Carbon, Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Planning for Sustainable Energy

A Bright Future for Planning

Resources

References

Index

Other Titles in the Series

Becoming an Architect, Second Edition

Lee W. Waldrep, Ph.D.

Becoming a Digital Designer

Steven Heller and David Womack

Becoming a Graphic Designer, Third Edition

Steven Heller and Teresa Fernandes

Becoming an Interior Designer, Second Edition

Christine M. Piotrowski FASID, IIDA

Becoming a Landscape Architect

Kelleann Foster

Becoming a Product Designer

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Bayer, Michael.

Becoming an urban planner : a guide to careers in planning and urban design / by Michael Bayer, Nancy Frank and Jason Valerius.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-27863-5 (pbk.)

1. City planning--Vocational guidance. I. Frank, Nancy (Nancy K.), 1954- II. Valerius, Jason. III. Title.

NA9013.B39 2010

307.1'216023--dc22

2009018435

Bayer: To Michelle, Adam, and Clark

Valerius: To Amy and Rhys

Frank: To Bill

About the Authors

Michael Bayer, AICP, is a senior planner with Environmental Resources Management in Annapolis, Maryland, where he develops comprehensive plans for local governments. He has a master's degree in urban planning from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. As a planner and journalist, he has researched and written extensively about land use, transportation, urban redevelopment, and environmental policy.

Nancy Frank, AICP and Associate Professor, is chair of the urban planning program at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she teaches planning theory and environmental planning. She holds a Ph.D. from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the State University of New York at Albany. In addition to her teaching and research, Dr. Frank is the founder of a charter high school in Milwaukee, the School for Urban Planning and Architecture.

Jason Valerius, AICP, is a senior planner with MSA Professional Services, Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin, where he leads a team of planners and urban designers engaged in a wide range of planning for local government and private development clients. He has master's degrees in architecture and urban planning from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and has made planning and design for sustainable communities a focus of his practice.

Preface

WHAT DO I WANT TO DO IN MY CAREER? This question is universal and is one urban planners ask themselves even years after they've entered the profession. For most people, there is no simple answer, because the choices we have are limited only by our imaginations, our experiences, our knowledge, and the opportunities that surround us and that we are able to create for ourselves and for others.

Deciding to enter the planning profession is a key point in a person's life. While many resources exist to guide a person through the process of choosing a school or introducing particular fields of planning, to date there has been no one guide that provided this information with real-life examples to demonstrate planning as it is lived. Becoming an Urban Planner seeks to serve an important function–to provide a portrait of urban planning through the eyes of its practitioners.

Although planners touch everybody's lives in many ways, from the moment we open the door to the time we park our car or bicycle at the end of the work day, very few people outside of the profession understand what planning is and what planners do.

Segments of the public have become more informed about planning as smart growth and New Urbanism have become prominent public issues and we as a nation grapple with growth, sprawl, traffic congestion, infrastructure, land use, and revitalization at scales from the street to the megaregion.

The challenges provided by these issues have inspired countless people to become urban planners. What many have quickly found is that these problems are complex and must be addressed across disciplines, both within planning and by collaborating with allied professions.

At its core, urban planning is about problem solving: identifying problems, analyzing these problems to create a basis for decision making, working with communities and stakeholders to develop alternatives, and, ultimately, to implement solutions that address the problems and result in tangible benefits. This problem solving happens in many contexts: in governments and the private sector, in small towns and large cities, on site-specific issues with a few key players, and on global problems that involve thousands of people. The input on these issues spans the gamut as well: from small public meetings and focus groups to large interactive gatherings featuring web-based involvement tools where people provide input using the latest advances in technology.

Even planners who commit early to a particular specialization within planning and become expert in specific planning tools and contexts cannot anticipate how their careers will evolve and what issues they will confront in the future.

Becoming an Urban Planner addresses this complexity through the eyes of more than 80 planners working across the United States and Canada in a variety of situations. Through this book, we try to put a face to this complexity, inspire potential planners to explore planning as a career, and provide all of the information you need to make a decision to pursue planning and chart a course for your career.

We have paired information on the field of planning with the real-life experiences of planners. We outline the skills the profession requires and how to hone them, both in school and as professionals. We also outline potential career paths and describe what people in these positions do. We identify lessons learned, what to aspire to and what to avoid. We have interviewed people who are broad generalists and others who have devoted their careers to a particular aspect of planning. For each, we have asked planners to describe how they have arrived at where they are.

By the end of the book, we hope that you, as a potential urban planner, have a clear understanding of what urban planning is and what planners do so that you are able to make an informed decision on your own career path, with thoughts in mind about how successful planners have charted their own paths to success.

Acknowledgments

PLANNING IS A COLLABORATIVE PROCESS, and so it is fitting that this book is the product of a collaborative effort. To view the profession through the eyes of practitioners, we relied on the willingness of dozens of planners from across the United States to share their thoughts, feelings, motivations, stories, successes, failures, challenges, and lessons learned with a wide audience. Their collective experience is shared here, and we owe them an immense debt of gratitude.

Every planner who participated in this book provided an insight into planning that informed us as authors about the profession and its future. Because of the limits of the format, in many cases, we could only communicate an outline of what many planners shared with us in depth. One of the great joys of planning is the unlimited potential of experiences it provides us through the variety and breadth of projects on which we work. These projects, more than any textbook or technical knowledge we acquire, really define us as planners. We appreciate the willingness of so many of our colleagues to serve as these lenses so that planners-to-be can understand how a career in planning can play out in real life.

Many people willingly dug into their archives of art to share them with us, in particular Dan Burden, Barry Miller, Dana Bourland, Rick Bernhardt, Ronald Bailey, and Paul Olsen.

We also recognize David Holden, AICP, of PB PlaceMaking; Sue Schwartz, FAICP, of the City of Greensboro; and Dr. Ruth Yabes of Arizona State University, for reviewing drafts of the manuscript.

Finally, but not last in our minds, is John Czarnecki of John Wiley and Sons, our editor and colleague, who reached out to us and enabled us to work on this fascinating project. Without his help, guidance, and doggedness, we would not have completed it.

Michael Bayer, AICP

Nancy Frank, Ph.D., AICP

Jason Valerius, AICP

Personal Acknowledgments

I am indebted to my wife, Michelle Landrum, and children, Adam and Clark, who sacrificed their evenings and weekends to allow me to work on this project, while I attempted to balance it, myself, with the life of the planner and all of the demands and experiences of my day (and night) job. The act of balancing career and personal life within urban planning is an art not always well executed, but in the end, is tremendously rewarding.

I also owe thanks to Uri Avin, FAICP, who helped me bridge the public and private sectors and introduced me to his vast network of planners across the country, many of whom are represented in this book. I must acknowledge Craig Watson, RLA, with whom I've had many conversations about mentorship and team building and the role that planners can and should play in the professional development of others.

Michael Bayer, AICP

To my wife, Amy Payne, I owe heartfelt thanks for the patience with the late nights and weekends diverted toward this effort.

Jason Valerius, AICP

Thanks to my students for their patience with me in the final stretch in completing this book. Tomorrow is another day, and tomorrow my students are at the top of my “to do” list. Thanks, too, to my colleagues for their constant support along the way. As always, I am grateful for my husband's patience, encouragement, and support. I owe tremendous gratitude to the many planners who have shared their wisdom with me over the years. But finally, and especially, my great thanks to my former students Michael Bayer and Jason Valerius, who are valued colleagues and who made this project sing.

Nancy Frank, AICP

Chapter 1

Becoming an Urban Planner: What Planners Do

URBAN PLANNING IS A PROFESSION that offers a wide range of opportunities for people with many different talents and aspirations.

Yet, unlike the occupations of doctor, architect, lawyer, or engineer, the work of the urban planner is not well known to people outside the profession.

The name of the profession, “urban planning,” is straightforward and descriptive. Urban planners plan for the future of urban areas. But this literal description of the work of an urban planner only scratches the surface of the role of urban planners. Planners work to ensure that cities have what they need to grow and prosper, including:

Places where people can livePlanners estimate the number of households that will need to be housed in the coming years and recommend where within the community land should be set aside for homes to be built. In the process, planners work with communities to determine the proportion of homes that will be single-family houses, duplexes, or multi-family housing and the proportion that will be targeted for home ownership versus rental. Planners also work on policies affecting the price of housing in a community, to ensure that low-income and moderate-income residents (like store clerks, restaurant staff, nursing assistants, and teachers) have comfortable and affordable housing available to them.Places where employers can build shops, offices, and factoriesIn addition to working to identify the best places within a community for locating factories, shopping areas, and offices, planners also work to attract jobs to communities. Economic development planners study the local economy to identify needs and create programs to fill those needs. For example, planners work with employers and local educational institutions to make sure that the students receive training in the skills required by local industries or by the industries that the community would like to locate there.Transportation facilities (roads, rail, airports, and seaports)Planners study transportation systems to determine when additional transportation facilities are needed, where they should be built, and the mix of transportation options that should be available. Planners collect and analyze information to find out whether the growth and prosperity of a region is hampered because the transportation network does not provide sufficient access to some locations in the community or because congestion is creating excessive delays in getting from one place to another. Planners know that industry needs an efficient transportation system for moving raw materials in and manufactured products out. While the number of cars per person has steadily increased since the nineteenth century, planners work to create a balanced transportation system in which residents can choose to live in areas that are designed to make biking, walking, and transit (buses, light rail, and commuter rail) more successful.Clean water for drinking and washing and systems for managing wastesPlanners work with civil engineers to ensure that basic urban infrastructure—sewer and water-will be available as a community grows. How a community grows can have a dramatic effect on the cost of providing sewer and water services. For example, laying out a neighborhood with large lots served by sewer and water requires more spending on pipes and requires more maintenance by the city in the future. Planners work with communities to understand the effects of land use decisions on the cost of providing sewer and water services and to modify land use policies as needed. Planners also work with hydrogeologists and civil engineers to develop plans for the sustainable use of sources of drinking water, to ensure that the supply of water will remain sufficient in the future.