r/urbanplanning

Hope everyone’s doing well!

I was recently offered admission for a top Urban Planning master’s program in the U.S. I picked Transportation Planning and Economic Development as my two main interests, and I’m curious to know what you all think would be the best specialization to pick that could offer the most flexibility and career opportunities.

While transportation is what I typically gravitate towards, I also see a lot of opportunities when it comes to economic development.

Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated!

This is a fairly sizeable opposition where I live (Somerville Massachusetts), people hate developers and see allowing new housing construction as rewarding developers with profit from the lack of affordability in housing. But what's the alternative, when they also don't want tax dollars going to pay for said housing?

Do you guys have good diverse community engagement turn outs from your community meetings? What are your techniques to getting a large variety of people. I know the obvious answers but I would like to see your success story.🙂

There is square in the city where I live which seems to have had several small attempts at regeneration but each of them failed.

For example, a fancy restaurant setups there. 3-4 years later it closes down. Professional service providers like accountants have renovated offices there and moved it. Guess what 3-4 years later, they close them down. It seems like any green shoots of regeneration, gentrification, (call it what you like) in this small part of the city get squashed.

I'm suspecting there are some bigger issues at play here. I would like to know what are the success factors needed for sustained urban regeneration?

This monthly recurring post will help concentrate common questions around career and education advice.

The goal is to reduce the number of posts asking similar questions about Education or Career advice and to make the previous discussions more readily accessible.

Most posts about education, degree programs, changing jobs, careers, etc., will be removed so you might as well post them in here.

Please use this thread for posts not normally allowed on the sub. Feel free to also post about what you're up to lately, questions that don't warrant a full thread, advice, etc.

This thread will be moderated minimally; have at it. No insults or spam.

Note: these threads will be replaced monthly.

Hey everyone,

I’m wondering if anthropology and the skills that it brings with it are sought after in planning?
It seems like understanding human culture could be important to understanding why people associate significance with places and how they use them.
Anthropology also brings skills that seem valuable to planning such as conflict solving and listening to the voice of minorities, to name a few.

Is this something valued and needed in urban planning, or is there no potential there.

Interested to hear your thoughts!

An exploratory piece talking about what can cities look like in a world where populations are no longer growing, but shrinking.

This is not j*b adv*ce, mods, this is an anecdotal discussion on how private sector planners feel during this very turbulent year in the US.

Is private sector work slowing down? Projects getting smaller? Any real effects since all this U.S. stuff going down in 2026? Chopping blocks looming overhead? Billables changing?

Im public where its definitely slowing down, and really wondering what its like on the other side.

Parking requirements are a primary talking point. Residential minimum parking limits get the most attention because they're easy to understand particularly for the people who find themselves paying for a parking spot they don't use. Commercial parking is mentioned in passing but not emphasized because "corporations are bad" and it's not popular to help them (I'm exaggerating, but you get it) and not often divided into categories.

Meanwhile demand for AirBnB is what's ultimately allowing it to affect housing prices and the demand comes from the dismal state of the hotel industry. You might counter that this is on a problem in tourist towns but those do tend to be t ones suffering the most severe housing price issues and basically all of the infamous "coastal cities" are tourist destinations. Surely this is worthy of some attention.

It's pretty conspicuous to me that any recently built hotel has a massive parking lot and usually isn't very convenient to transit. Cities have essentially punitive tax rates on hotels and push them away from the main streets. They are treated like a public nuisance. Something could be improved. It might require figuring out how to make them less of a nuisance. But it seems like designing for tourism is looked down upon even though it can be important for improving the quality of life for the locals.

I got accepted to UCSD (I currently live in San Diego), UC Berkeley, and Cal Poly SLO for City/Urban Planning and Urban Studies. I was wondering what the differences are between each school and what the pros and cons are for getting a bachelor’s degree at each.

How can we make a city like Tokyo in America and what state would work the best? It would need lots of unused land, we would need Japanese architects to help plan the layout.. And is this even something that would be remotely possible in the future? I would love to hear peoples thoughts on this because I don't know if its even possible with all the US Zoning and how different Japan utilizes their land compared to US. I would love for the US to make a big city that is like Japan with the same style, roads, buildings, and shopping districts. Idk if this is even possible but I can dream.

I want to point out that I’m definitely not the only one who has been struggling to get a job these days, but can I get a reassurance, please?

For context, I graduated from college last year as a geography major + having 2 years of graphic design (from a part-time job I was having when I was working for one of my school’s department) and have been applying for jobs continuously (and every summer when I was still a student), whether they are internships or full-time. I was only able to get about 2-3 interviews last year and sadly, I was never selected because they gave me some reasons like I’m under-qualified because I have no prior planning experience or a lack of certain skills (which they never stated what I’m missing). I did volunteer at a transit advocacy group and created graphics for them but sadly, it was only for a month and they don’t offer part-time or full-time. So during that period, I created several maps on my own (I used to make them a lot because I had so much fun creating them in the past, along with creating wayfinding signage, stickers, art, etc) by relearning GIS in hopes of increasing the chance of landing an interview and of course, nothing happened. In the meantime, I tried to network and was able to connect with many people who work in the municipalities, transit agencies and private companies by having online chats, asking for advice and learning how they get to where they are at now. I didn’t want to sound desperate so I tried to keep my questions about their work and never ask for referrals unless they wanted to. And through those chats, I was shocked to learn that coming from a state school (I’m from California) would put me at a disadvantage because a person from a private company told me that before they changed their hiring policies, they only used to hire people from prestigious schools. Not sure if the policies have “changed” but when I searched for that company, I only found a few alumni working there. Either way, I proceeded with my backup plan, which was to apply to planning schools. I applied to a few in the US and Canada and got rejected from all of them (was waitlisted on one of the schools but eventually got rejected this month due to all seats being filled + couldn’t provide any funding for me). There’s also another school which I thought I had a chance at because I got an interview offer and thought I did okay with it, but ultimately they rejected me because of a lack of funding. I thought I’d be numbed by them because I’ve been receiving many rejection emails from the jobs that I applied to, but no, they hurt me even worse, especially since I spent a few months preparing for the applications and refining my admission letters. I honestly couldn’t pick myself up and wondered if I’m enough or not. I distant myself from everything until recently and I decided to keep applying for jobs (in several major US cities and even other countries) until I land an interview.

Anyway, I’m sorry for my rant but I’m just frustrated with everything and sort of losing direction. Right now, I’m still thinking whether to get a GIS certificate or not because I want to get into transit planning and not sure if that would help. I also have the idea of making more wayfinding signage and maps because they’re fun to create but I doubt that would make any difference. If anyone could give me a reassurance or advice that would be great, even a simple “you got this” would help haha. Thanks :)

I've searched for and seen threads with wheelchair users wondering if they should get into the field and if their perspective would be appreciated.

I haven't seen a thread that answered my questions about accommodations for invisible disabilities. I have cptsd and probably autism spectrum. I am wondering if planning office environments would accept someone who has to work part time, like 30 hours a week, or take long amounts of time off for sickness, like 2 weeks, maybe a couple of times a year, from diagnnosed conditions.

Maybe you can ask at your places of work if you don't know.

Thanks

I know what makes a walkable city. problem is how we trigger the chain reaction

1. get public support

2. build public transport

3. mid rise housing

4. businesses will come in I guess?

if it works our grandsons would be grateful

Hi guys, as someone who is currently exploring professions and different career paths inside urban planning (mostly focused in transportation) I want to know if any of you guys have experience on that? I was looking into the Alumni network of my master degree program and I have found many of them are currently working in companies such as Swiftly, Replica, Cambridge Systematics, Lyft, Waymo, etc. While they are very tech adjacent I think they relate to transportation planning, and I would like to know what you guys know about it/or think it’s important to know before getting into it ?

California legislators led by Oakland's Buffy Wicks have a package of six bills to make it easier and cheaper to build prefab housing. Some powerful labor unions are actually on board this time. It could help make projects pencil out in the Bay Area, just in time for SB 79 to kick in.