Urban planning careers involve helping communities decide how best to use their land and resources with an eye toward future growth and revitalization.
Urban planners, also called regional or city planners, recommend locations for roads, schools, and other infrastructure in order to help local officials solve social, economic, and environmental problems.
Job Summary:
This job generally requires the ability to do the following work:
Prepare plans and studies
Conduct inspections
Prepare site approval documents
Coordinate with other local governments
Create and interpret maps and diagrams
Meet with public officials and the public regarding development plans and land use
Recommend approval or denial of proposals
Urban planners identify the best way to meet community needs in terms of infrastructure and handling growth. This involves overseeing all aspects of planning, including reviewing research on economic and environmental impacts.
Planners work with developers and with other communities on the best way to turn proposals into reality. This also sometimes means recommending that proposals be rejected if research and analysis show that the project would not be beneficial or might actually be detrimental.
Urban Planner Skills & Competencies
Urban planners need to have a lot of specific knowledge and experience to be good at their jobs, but they also need certain soft skills to help them manage the sometimes challenging environment of government work.
Flexibility: Deadlines and specific priorities for projects often change, and planners need to adapt.
Verbal Communication: Planners need to be able to interact with members of the public, including the local business community, and members of elected councils and boards. Its important to be able to communicate a municipalitys planning needs while also listening to the interests and priorities of others.
Leadership: Urban planners need to be able to serve as a point person on community projects, often overseeing a staff of other planners or local employees.
Analytical skills: Urban planners need to be able to review a lot of data from environmental studies, market studies, population demographics, and more. They need to be able to use that information to come up with the best possible solutions to planning problems.

Keyskills: change control cost analysis urban design cost estimation project design infrastructure architecture design calculations