The urban planning profession

Every profession is going through genuine change. The planning profession is no exception. The change will be only as good as we allow ourselves to show up.

If you are reading this blog post, you likely seek genuine change for the place you live, work, learn, and do business. Yet, somehow might feel like you are either making minimal or no difference at all. If you are feeling good, then you are one of a very few people experiencing transformative place development.

For most urban planners, we are living in a pattern set before us. We evolved out of the landscape architecture profession - the era of Olmsted, Burnham, Mumford, Wright. While not diverse, equitable, or inclusive, the planning profession launched a viable path toward creating thriving cities. Since the 1960s, we've lost our agency, authority, and appeal from the founding days of our profession. If you seek prestige or street cred, you don't pursue a career in planning.

I believe our street cred will shift and grow substantially over the next ten years. While the New Deal Era policies, and the 1949 Housing Act, and our peers' outcomes have left us in a state of irrelevance toward placemaking, I believe the fatal flaws won't define us in the future.

The systems we are operating in don't allow us to show up as the creators we are. As Thomas Campanella describes, we are "Too busy planning. Too busy slogging through the bureaucratic maze, issuing permits and enforcing zoning codes, hosting community get-togethers, making sure developers get their submittals in on time and pay their fees."

For us to be credible, we have to show up and change the operating principles. We are big-picture thinkers who imagine alternatives that are real, resilient, and genuine. I agree with Campanella and the need for a regenesis in our profession that allows urban planners to show up as creators, not processors of someone else's desires.

The planning profession is worthy to pursue. We can change the trajectory of inequality, stagnation, and decline. It will require us to do what is natural to our profession: notice the pattern and change our practice.