• Cyburbia is a friendly big tent, where we share our experiences and thoughts about urban planning practice, the built environment, planning adjacent topics, and anything else that comes to mind. No ads, no spam, and it's free. It's easy to join!

Careers 🎩 Reposting from Zoned Out Planner - 10 lessons they don't teach in planning school

JNA

JNA

Cyburbian Plus
Messages
31,943
Points
79
They taught us how to write staff reports, draw site plans, and analyze zoning codes.
They didn’t teach us how to survive a three-hour public meeting where half the room thinks you’re personally trying to ruin their neighborhood.

Planning school covers theory, policy, and design. But the real-world skills? You learn those on the job — sometimes the hard way.

Here are 10 lessons every new planner needs:
✅
Navigating political landmines
✅
Speaking plain English (no jargon allowed)
✅
Playing the long game when projects take years
✅
Handling a NIMBY storm
✅
Understanding where budgets really come from
✅
Making allies outside the planning department
✅
Working with developers without losing your soul
✅
Navigating public meeting drama
✅
Recognizing and managing burnout
✅
Trusting your own professional judgment
 
My current lesson is managing the junior planners.

1. How to knock the stars out of your eyes without losing the motivation to work here.
2. For older junior planners, no we did not promise you a raise, HR just said they would do a comp study, not actually change anything.
3. Herding cats to all answer the same way. You know, like the code says.
4. How to rework a bad process in a room full of bureaucrats.
5. Yes, customer service is a thing for places besides Target (I'd say Walmart, but they have none)
 
I would add in the following:
  • Less is more or you will loose the City Council (Staff reports and presentations)
  • Understand "WHY" something is in your code and make sure it is enforceable.
  • Educate then Enforce
  • Site Plan Review is a Team Sport and everyone participates
  • New Urbanist 15-Minute City does not work everywhere... and some people won't want it.
  • It is not your plan... it is the Community's Plan. However you can (and should) educate them towards better decisions.
 
  • Treat contentious public interaction like it's community theater. Depersonalizing it in this way can go a long way toward preserving one's mental health
  • You don't have to specialize. Becoming a well-rounded generalist (a "complete planner" as this great essay put it) can be a ticket to rewarding career that keeps you from getting stale.
  • Learn what your sphere of control is, within the planning context you work within, and how to advance a positive agenda within the confines of that sphere. It's different for every community and every council you work under.
  • Have text amendments on deck ready to go for when the political stars align
  • Being able to communicate an idea visually, with a quick hand sketch (even just a rough massing, or parklet, or what have you) can go a long way toward advancing a positive outcome with an applicant if you catch them early enough
 
Last edited:
- Cars aren't bad across the board, the way we prioritize them is. Be open minded to having to drive for work, and be sure you know how to drive a proper manual transmission.

-Don't limit yourself to major metro areas, taper your expectations and you may find that small and midsize cities are pretty great if you find the right one.

-Don't compare yourself to the whiz kids who you see taking jobs you think are "better" than yours. If you're somewhere that's not totally toxic or dead end, approach your work with the passion and open mind necessary to keep growing your skills.

-Don't be a politician, but know how to deal with them and be deferent when you need to. The baby boom generation still control allot of things, and you have to know how to talk to them and understand the time in which they came into the profession was a different world than ours, you can learn allot from chill boomers. That being said, don't put up with their typical sh!! if its disrespectful and killing your vibe.

-Even if you have to be "that arsehole" sometimes when dealing with difficult personalities, don't treat your residents and public with contempt. If you can, live in the community you plan for and be a part of it. If the community you plan for is distressed/the hood, put on for your city and be about improvement! If you cant handle that, go into the private sector.

-GPA doesnt matter in the long run. Only include it on your CV if you are a very recent grad and its above 3.5

-APA has its issues, but if you can afford it, go for AICP in your late 30s/early 40s just because. Its not an end all be all like it was in the 1990s, but it helps to have if you want to advance to a director level or work on the dark side.

-CNU is lame and an anachronism to 1995. Embrace good things from the 90s like Goldeneye 64, Nirvana and Volvo 850s, be critical of new urbanism in places it doesn't belong.

-Don't drink in excess or overdo it on the green stuff especially when you are young and trying to establish yourself, there is a time and a place for everything.

-Exploring new cities and regions is fun! but don't blow up good jobs to go off to far flung places to chase lovers/impractical dreams and waste your entire 20s being a hipster, like I did ;)

-Planning is cool but its not like it makes you any better/worse of a person because you are an urbanist. Always have an escape plan, and try and have a hustle/skill you can fall back on in case Planning isn't no longer your vibe. For me its Cars, for you it can be literally anything. Its OK to leave the discipline, I did for a few years.

-If you do leave the discipline and want to re-enter when you are older, don't expect to be a boss and don't think learning things from younger colleagues is beneath you. I had a coworker who was nearly a decade younger than me who I learned so much from in my present role.

-Dont be jealous of Lawyers. Everyone is going to tell you to go to Law School at some point. Yes land use lawyers CAN make bank, but the Law market is oversaturated worse than ours and many Lawyers grow to resent their careers. That being said, it helps to have good lawyers (and engineers!) in your circle of friends.
 
MacheteJames said:
Click to expand...

The Terminator said:
-Don't limit yourself to major metro areas, taper your expectations and you may find that small and midsize cities are pretty great if you find the right one.
-Don't compare yourself to the whiz kids who you see taking jobs you think are "better" than yours. If you're somewhere that's not totally toxic or dead end, approach your work with the passion and open mind necessary to keep growing your skills.
-GPA doesnt matter in the long run. Only include it on your CV if you are a very recent grad and its above 3.5
Click to expand...
Good points - because I saw myself in them & had a 31 year career
 
Aside from what's been mentioned here:

Planning school never covers subdivision regulations, which are one of the most mundane and least glamorous aspects of the planning profession. Bad subdivision regulations can undermine a community and its planning efforts to such an extent that it'll take decades, if not centuries to fix. Some suburbs of my hometown are still dealing with the fallout of uncontrolled premature subdivision dating back to the late 1800s. Consider that property boundaries in Europe were filed with someone with a name like Lucius Flavius down at the Basilica Municipium. It's easier to demolish buildings than to move property lines.

If you've been exposed to new, innovative best practices in a past growth region, you'll also have to do the hard sell among staff if you eventually find yourself working in a slow growth region. Trust me on this one.

There's vast regional differences in adoption of good planning practices. A few examples: there's less of a stigma against billboards and high rise signs in southern states. New urbanism, form-based codes, and architectural regulations are less common in the Northeast than elsewhere in the US, while strip residential development and large lot subdivision can be more common. Residential streets in western states tend to be much wider than the rest of the US.

Notice the details in the built environment, and document them, Don't mind your spouse's comments when you're taking photos of dumpster enclosures, rooftop mechanical equipment screening, wall projections and recesses, or traffic signs with black painted backs.

Become a second order, third order, and fourth order thinker. Look those up.

Read my OP in this thread.
 
Back
Top