Professional values commit planners to environmental recovery and sustainability, social equity, participatory democracy, the restoration and preservation of the historical and cultural buildings of a community's identity, and the objective of deliberate, effective design. Planners implement plans formulated and adopted in the public interest.

Skilled planners are needed for human communities everywhere to jump-start reinvestment, respond positively to change or growth, enhance their sense of community, and improve their quality of life.

Careers in this field offer both personal and professional satisfaction.

Project Types
Planners use their skills in all three economic sectors--public, private for-profit, and private nonprofit. Their work involves the development and redevelopment of distinct and varied communities:

• inner-city neighborhoods
• rural small towns
• sprawling suburbs
• metropolitan downtowns
• commercial districts
• new residential and mixed-use developments
• recreational and cultural venues

Professionals in this field build careers in specialties such as comprehensive planning, physical planning, community development, enterprise planning, economic development, environmental preservation, transportation, housing, and land use.

Project Roles
Planners help communities identify their problems and central values, formulate goals and alternative approaches to achieving community objectives, and avoid undesired consequences of change. This process results in frameworks for coping with change, such as:

• Physical elements, including streets, roads, and sewer lines.
• Concepts that serve as guides to action, such as the goal of becoming a major distribution center or of encouraging investment in the city's core.
• Regulatory measures, reflecting the desires of the community to encourage good development and discourage bad development.

Planning professionals help communities become more diverse, broadening the variety of employment, educational, cultural, entertainment, shopping, and housing opportunities and promoting a broad range of land uses, income levels, and types of people. They also help communities deal with the clashes of interest produced by such variety and turn these differences into a positive force for constructive change.

Throughout all this work, planners spend much of their time working directly with people.

Job Opportunities
Planners work in a variety of professional settings at the state, regional, metropolitan, county, city, and neighborhood scales. Their contexts may be in center cities or in rural small towns.

Professionals in this field find employment in public planning and housing/community development agencies, land development and professional service firms, and nonprofit corporations serving neighborhoods and various public interests.

Becoming a Professional
Planning education is a broad-based learning experience because planners need knowledge about a wide variety of areas. Professional certification by the American Institute of Certified Planners requires a prescribed combination of planning education, professional practice, and a nationally administered examination covering the field of planning. 

Aptitudes for Success
To be successful in an environmental design and planning career, aspiring professionals should develop:

• The ability to perceive and interpret societal needs, goals, and values in regard to the earth's limited resources.
• Analytical abilities through training in mathematics and the physical and social sciences.
• The ability to organize and synthesize concepts.
• Artistic talent--the ability to see and compose functional, creative environments.
• The ability to communicate effectively--orally and in written and graphic form--with clients, the public, and other professionals.

For More Information
David Schoen, Acting Chair
Department of Urban Planning
(765) 285-1963
ekelly@bsu.edu