Aspiring Urban Planner Thread --- How to Be A Better Planner

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I hope that all urban planners of the future will say hi here.

Where should we start if we want to start our urban planning careers?

Get involved here?
http://xl.skyscrapercity.com/?page=about

Maybe there's people here who you can connect with who know those things.

I would think engineering and architecture would be the two biggest places, though business may not be bad, either. Some political acumen would definitely help.

So what interested you in this topic?

Hi, I'm a structural engineer working in the construction industry (amongst other endeavours). If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Engineering and architecture! Oh dear, I forgot to take higher-level art and physics classes. Oh my!

Well I had a friend from Singapore get his bachelor's degree in Australia at the same time as I did. There's different aspects to urban planning and in my opinion (purely personal experience from working) engineers and architects operate from two opposing mindsets. Occassionally you meet gifted individuals that can do both. An architect makes an idea into a template and the engineer makes the template into a physicality. Urban planners, if not doing both, need to be able to delegate by management. So it's a little bit art-science-business.

If you found the number for an Urban Planner, they'd be willing and happy to show you how they got where they are. I find that professionals in this industry feel validated when a student asks them 'how did you become what you are'. Give it a try

Thank you. Hopefully I will learn more about Urban Planning, beyond just buildings and design.

Geez, I used to think that Geography alone will just suffice in Urban Planning. I never thought there are so many dimensions in the design of a great city, even after reading books on urban planning!

I think becoming an urban planner is great. It seems like in most of USA and Canada, urban planning is a lost art. Just look how most new suburbs are being built: curving streets going every which way and looping back onto themselves, massive big-box stores located miles away from houses, street arrangements where you have to drive for ten minutes when the straight-line distance is less than a mile, and huge tracts of characterless housing subdivisions. Occasional historic buildings pop up here and there, but they eventually get torn down to build more subdivisions or big-box stores, unless the government can save them quickly enough.

If you looks at well-planned areas, you'll find that most of them are quite old, from before World War II. During Eisenhower's highway building program and the suburban sprawl, quality urban planning was lost. Instead of being planned by geographers and engineers, new areas now planned by private developers who couldn't care less about the quality of their work, just the profit from it. All towns can do in respond by building better roads, which leads to more traffic. Some suburbs are rebuilding their downtowns to be nothing short of wonderful, but once you move away from the small central area, you have the same stereotypical suburbia.

Fascination with maps and urban planning is commonplace among aspies. Also, aspies are less likely to be driven by obsession with profit, so they may produce truly great work, as opposed to the most profitable work. So, perhaps we can regain the urban planning knowledge that was lost in the general public over the last 60 years.

Limitations of Urban Planning

Money

Nowadays, planners are usually profit-oriented. Without money, it is difficult for planners to envision grand plans for the city. Sadly, money is limited --- look at the cases in Dubai and Rio De Janeiro...

Governmental Support

Governments will want their cities to look grand and nice, but it may not be sustainable, neither does it fit the needs of the city. A good example would be the Pearl River Delta in China. It wants to build a grand road link between Hong Kong and Macau/Zhuhai, but it has no rail link nor any links to Shenzhen due to political opposition in Hong Kong...

People

Lastly, fellow urban planners may have their own egos, especially architects and engineers. It's hard to work around them.

What else do I need to note about Urban Planning?

Money is only a problem in certain areas. Dubai is a messed up case. Basically all that construction was fueled by money shifters who were building up an unsustainable metropolis on the edge of the desert. It's a poorly planned city in my view, heavily reliant on its roadway system. The Burj might be the tallest structure in the world now, but compare it to its surroundings. It says everything about the motivations involved.

But that said, there are places right around the world that are looking to sustainable planning, especially in the west. Money is always going to be involved because it's a capitalist enterprise first and foremost. They build these things for the economy, not for egalitarian reasons. You will just need to get used to that. The same goes for dealing with the government. When you're asking for taxpayers money, of course they will always want the most for the least $.

These are part of the challenges involved. But when you talk about egos of engineers and architects, you should know that these are the people who you will be working with. It's a team effort, not one man's epic vision. The Panama Canal wasn't built just because Teddy Roosevelt had a dream. It took a group of experts and thousands of labourers. You need to learn to become a consensus builder.

Working on a capitalist-based system and learning to build consesus between the government, the people and the long-term needs of the city...

Hmm, this is really a good challenge for all of us, aspiring urban planners.