Find The Right Place To Work
Planners usually work with teams in specific organizations. Different work environments suit different people. In the planning profession the type of organization in which you work has a dramatic impact on the types of projects you engage and, just as important, your ability to make a difference by solving the problems in your community. While the planning profession has clear statements of ethics and defined areas of expertise, the impact on your behavior induced by the organization in which you practice cannot be underestimated. Finding the right place to suit your needs and skills can be difficult. In addition, it is not just the structure of the organization which makes a difference but also your fellow team members and your ability to engage with them in a productive and meaningful way. The following are some of the most typical models of the organizations in which planners work, including a wide range of public agencies as well as diverse private sector organizations.
Do planners create better solutions when they feel strong emotional ties to the communities in which they practice — when they feel that their “work” life and “home” home life exist in harmony?
1. Local Public Agencies
Perhaps the most common workplace for planners is the planning agency in local government – whether it is a large metropolitan community with a population of millions or a small rural village of a few thousand. Within these agencies man subgroups or departments create plans just for one set of missions such as school districts, library districts, and water management districts. Also, there are multiple departments which will undertake planning for their own missions – police, fire, utilities, streets, sanitation, transit and technology. All of these different organizations and departments hire planners at the local level. Within this array of organizations, one of the more important types of local governmental units that involve major planning activities is a community development authority or equivalent like an urban renewal authority or housing authority.
Frequently the major task for planners in these teams is to find ways to make plans and coordinate their efforts. Can planners for the parks department work collaboratively with the redevelopment agency? Can public works planners integrate their mission with a sewerage district? In smaller communities, responsibility for multiple issues may be combined into fewer departments. In fact, some communities do not have separate planning departments but include the planning function with a community development agency or engineering department. .
A major attraction of agencies that plan at the local level is the potential to customize plans, see results, evaluate them, and improve the process. When a local planning agency decides to make a recommendation, which is subsequently approved by elected officials, the impact of that recommendation is usually direct and unfiltered. That is, the recommendation impacts people directly. When planning at higher levels (such as state or national organizations) the impacts on local communities become more indirect, difficult to track, evaluate, and improve.
Planners in municipal departments quickly learn the individual mission and goals in their team. Governmental organizations usually establish clear hierarchies for making decisions, assigning projects, and reporting on results. In some ways having a clearly defined mission and clearly defined lines of authority can make planning tasks more efficient. On the other hand, if the solution to the problems requires moving outside establish organization boundaries (that is, “coloring outside the lines”) the work can become frustrating and unproductive.
When you talk to planners in local agencies you often hear two sets of comments: (a) those from planners excited about how they are making headway in addressing an issue with which they are deeply concerned and (b) those who are frustrated with the situation and feel they are overly constrained in the actions they want to pursue. This has been the dilemma in working for public agencies for decades. These variations in work environments begin usually with decisions by elected officials regarding resources that are beyond the control of planning teams.
2. State and Regional Organizations
Planners also work in many types of organizations at the state and regional level. While each individual community creates plans, many problems require joint effort at higher level. Groups and clusters of cities share the same issues regarding places like waterfronts, river systems, valleys and other geographically defined areas. Some of these organizations represent multi-mission issues configured by alignments of social and economic conditions in a geographic area (such as regional transportation authorities, environmental agencies, and economic development departments – all of which have major planning functions).
At the state and regional level planners must focus on how the same planning policy will impact different types of communities. For example, a regional plan for transportation will have a different impact on a large city as compared to a small rural town. The same is true for plans regarding electric power, water supply and distribution, public health, and economic development. At this larger scale, most state and regional agencies have more of a direct impact on the distribution of public services than smaller, more targeted planning needs, such as the physical design of a plaza or main street.
Regional, as opposed to state organizations, follow different jurisdictional boundaries. Tribal organizations, for example, follow a different system of jurisdictions based on their own rights as well as negotiated agreements with the federal government. Also, for example, some regional organizations cross sate boundaries. One of the most well-known examples of a unique regional jurisdiction is the Port Authority of New York which includes portions three different states within its boundary (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut). The Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (BART), while located within one state boundary, also represents a powerful multijurisdictional organization. Over time, multi-state and multi-jurisdictional organizations develop their own taxing authority which, in turn, helps such organizations go beyond simple planning activities to major public policy and economic development impacts given their ability to control resources for growth.
A key factor in understanding the role of plans at the state/regional level versus the municipal level derives from the system of legal authority governing each type of community. Cities only have the authority granted to them by the state. Consequently, when there are conflicting ideologies or needs in larger cities, versus the state as a whole, the planning process becomes competitive and often contentious. Even when the same political party controls both levels of government, the inherent social and economic needs of different types of communities will lead to major differences in planning. Many of these differences represent questions regarding the fair and balanced allocation of resources.
Jurisdictional planning conflicts have persisted not just in the U.S.A. but in other nation-states in which centralized control at a higher level of jurisdiction conflicts with lower level decentralized control. As noted previously, part of the role of planners is too understand what level of jurisdiction is most appropriate for different types of planning decisions. State planners, for example, may recommend critical state-wide decisions about a state park or state-funded university in ways that benefit the larger statewide population while local municipal planners want such planned investments to be configured in ways that primarily help their local community.
One of the longest-running areas of conflict between planning functions occurs between central municipalities representing a major metropolitan area surrounded by suburban communities. Frequently, from the view of overall urban systems, a central city and its surrounding suburbs are actually one larger community with different geographic components. Yet when it comes to distribution of resources, both the central city and surrounding suburbs have clearly different resources. Over the years there have been numerous examples of suburbs blocking any attempts to shift their resources to their urban center (and vice-versa). This type of jurisdictional conflict makes sense when the two types of areas have clear geographic separation of economic and social activity. In contrast, such conflicts can be harmful in the extreme between an urban center and abutting peripheral suburbs – especially with conflicts over service systems that require integration to function effectively.
Historically, several examples of highly productive multijurisdictional coordination have occurred. New York City, for example, represents the combination of multiple cities that existed as separate jurisdictions (including the City of New York and the City of Brooklyn). Other agglomerations of cities have occurred through the creation of overarching organizations such as Metropolitan Planning Organizations which try to plan shared resources within a region. Going further back in time, the Venetian Republic and Hanseatic League represent powerful agglomerations of urban communities that represented city-states (as opposed to nation-states).
3. National Organizations and the Federal Government
When we look at the hierarchy of political jurisdictions, city planning functions occur at national, and even international, levels. In the U.S.A., the national structure of cabinet agencies all include major bureaucracies that make plans across multiple issues such as (transportation, commerce, housing and urban development, health, energy, interior and so on). Planners in these organizations face a dramatically different set of tasks compared to planners at the municipal level. Planners working at the national level need to understand, and help plan, decisions regarding regulations and programs that have highly diverse, often conflicting, impacts across thousands of communities. Such national planning comes with greater risks and potentially greater rewards.
To begin, one of the most difficult issues facing planners at the national level concerns predicting the impacts of policies. As noted previously, a national policy on setbacks and parking (such as requiring all homes to be setback 20 feet from the curb and provide two off-street parking spaces) is absurd. On the other hand, a national policy funding local neighborhoods within cities to support development of higher density housing with reduced parking requirements, might be helpful. Yet even this concept would yield protracted debate over issues like density, energy use, and walkability. The effective approach most often used by planners at high jurisdictional levels is to establish broad criteria for the use of funds and then allocate decision-making authority to organizations within state government.
At the higher level of federal and national planning, the spatial organization of plans also becomes too abstract or generalized to allow planners specific opportunities for specific place-based plans. Planners can, however, include examples, models or standards for place-based plans. Such standards are best known in transportation plans and policies where a national planning document will include standards for street and highway cross-sections. Over time, however, even national standards become customized to different circumstances. For example, over the last decades national standards for traffic plans have included many types of traffic-calming examples, models for improving walkability, complete streets, additions of bicycle lanes, pedestrian facilities, and related items. A few decades previously these standards were considered harmful. Nation-wide models also come from national organizations such as the American Planning Association, the Congress for the New Urbanism, think tanks (such as the Brookings Institution) and other national groups committed to improved planning decisions. In part, this trend toward identifying models for local place-based decisions represents a broader professional understanding that such decisions, while decentralized, must be acknowledged at a broad national level.
My current office environment supports a dynamic, team-oriented, open pattern of sharing and discussing tasks within a friendly, creative, community place. Good work environments for planners often use open-office planning reminiscent of design studios. As a planner you will need to adapt to your work environment in a way that allows you to be productive both as an individual as well as team member. GRAEF, Milwaukee, 2022.
The impact of national agencies on urban planning cannot be over emphasized. National organizations impact both the financial and intellectual resources that drive planning concepts and their implementation. National planning policies impact public health, energy consumption, economic growth and many other factors. Most important is the enormity of the federal budget and its distribution of resources into every community. While it may not be delivered directly into local planning organizations, federal funding for programs and services fuels much of the work at the local level. National resources that drive planning decisions include parks, security, education, energy generation, transportation and commerce.
At the federal level Supreme Court decisions also impact planning. Perhaps the most well-known case, Euclid vs. Ambler Realty in 1926, legitimized zoning. In 2005, not quite a century later, the Supreme Court, in Kelo v City of New London, legitimized (narrowly voting 5-4) the action of taking land for economic development as a “public use”. Not all planners agreed with this judgement from the standpoint of good planning practice. Yet, by one vote, the flow of planning decisions has been substantially changed across the nation and the practice of “eminent domain” was changed in almost every state. Beyond federal cases, legal judgements at the state and local levels have equally dramatic impacts on planning practice.
4. Private Sector Planning Consultants
Although city planning decisions and authority come from the government, many planners actually work in private firms. They serve as consultants – usually to government agencies – providing their expert opinion based on work across multiple clients and jurisdictions. For example, within a city government planning agency there may be only one or two experts in urban design, property development, or traffic engineering whose primary professional knowledge has been limited by the community they serve. A private consultant however may specialize in one of these fields and have a broad range of specialized knowledge derived from working on the same type of problem in multiple communities and regions.
Both private sector and public sector settings have unique advantages and disadvantages ranging from personal financial needs of planners (such as health care and pensions) to personal goals and aspirations (such as specializing in one field or focusing within one community). For example, in my practice we have worked on dozens of comprehensive plans, each customized to a different community. The communities for which we work have planners who are expert in managing and implementing such plans to fit their community’s unique organizational structure. Both types of planning professionals are needed to resolve planning issues effectively.
The neighborhood where you work will impact your attitude (and your performance) as much as the office environment. As a planner you should think of your work “neighborhood” as a critical asset to support your professional career. This photograph reflects the neighborhood of one of the offices I rented for our team. Milwaukee, 2005.
Many private sector planning consultants work within business that go beyond urban planning to include, for example, public administration, civil engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture. Within this context many private sector planners work more directly within the field of property investment and development. This entails projects such as residential subdivisions, multi-use urban centers, specialized land uses (such as entertainment districts or college campuses) and related projects. In these types of projects private sector planners still play a critical role in linking private sector development to the public plans and policies within which such projects occur. Does a development proposed for new housing fit into a local community’s plans? If so how? If not, can it be modified to satisfy local planning needs as well as the needs for private investment and market feasibility?
Many private sector projects, especially for new development – require planners to engage with local residents, businesses, and local stakeholders. In almost all cases conflicts arise between those members of the public who support a project and those in opposition. Most of the public has heard the acronym NIMBY (which stands for “not in my backyard”) which conjures images of political controversy when planners, correctly or incorrectly, try to make changes in local communities. It is not unusual to find members of the planning or design professions become advocates for ongoing political positions. In these cases, the planners should provide valid information with integrity and avoid misleading statements and misinformation. When conflicts reach a “boiling point” public employees, including local government planning staff, may face long-term negative job consequences. Private sector consultants, however, with a much broader client base, usually face smaller long-term job risks when working on a single controversial project.
5. Private Sector Planning in Corporations and Institutions
Planners also work for many large corporations, within which, there are needs for planning professionals. For example, a large manufacturing company may want to build a new factory in a community. Their planners may assist in finding appropriate locations, determining local constraints, and recommending options for implementation. The same may be true for large institutional uses such as hospitals and universities. While some large institutions clearly receive support from public agencies, many are private and “not-for-profit” institutions. Sometimes such organizations oversee large physical facilities, with clusters of buildings and their own utilities and service systems. These autonomous organizations also may use planning professionals to address long-term growth, new operations, and related tasks.
Finally, many planners choose to work for smaller private organizations, like community associations, that have missions related to urban planning. At times, these organizations represent just one neighborhood or set of neighborhoods. At other times, the phrase NGO (for “non-government-organization) is used to refer to groups that may have a presence in multiple communities. The missions embraced by such groups may include improving local business, providing affordable housing, making green infrastructure, creating alternative energy and related social missions. Local neighborhood groups can wield a major influence on proactive planning decisions in the same way NIMBY-based groups can become obstacles. Such groups often represent the most innovative concepts which may seem risky to local government but which, can in fact, provide concrete results (and proof-of-concept) for ideas that can be adopted on a much broader scale. Many planners have worked for such organizations as part of their career development – especially as interns or volunteers.
Topic Summary
1. Local Public Agencies
2. State and Regional Organizations
3. National Organizations and the Federal Government
4. Private Sector Planning Consultants
5. Private Sector Planning in Corporations and Institutions