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GIS Course Work

UrbanSprawlster

UrbanSprawlster

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Hello! I am currently trying to work out my summer course load and I wanted to ask: How often do planners use GIS in their day to day jobs? My internship experience and work experience has all been in transportation planning and I would like to keep working in that field. GIS course work at Ball State's program is optional and I want to know if it is worth paying out of pocket for an intro class. Thanks!
 
For me, GIS is a good thing to know about, but I wouldn't become an expert at it. Granted I work for a large city and do mostly site reviews.

It's a hard question to give a straight answer. If you work for a bigger city then planners do no GIS work. I have a dedicated GIS team to do all the work I need. I don't even get access to more than the web portal map we use. In smaller places I had to do some basic GIS database work because I wanted it. The GIS team was one person who kept up things like the parcel database. Traffic planners I imagine - never did traffic planning - use GIS more for analysis and making maps, but I would expect the big firms to have an expert on staff.
 
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