TOWN PLANNING
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Not many 5 year olds dream about being town planners when they grow up. But when being an astronaut, ballerina or racing driver starts to look a bit less realistic, town and country planning is a career you should consider.
You don’t play with building blocks any more, but through planning you can shape the world around you and help build a better future. Simon Bradbury, a planner at Transport for London, is working on travel plans for the London Olympics; “It’s incredibly exciting to develop innovative strategies using the very latest thinking while working on a unique project that will have the whole world watching.”
What do planners actually do?
Planning is a flexible, varied and rewarding career with opportunities to work in all sorts of locations, in lots of different fields. Instead of being stuck in the same routine, day in, day out, a job in planning can mean working with local communities, in some of the UK’s most spectacular scenery, or in countries across the world. Not only is there a great view, but with it comes the satisfaction of creating a greener future and better places for communities to live and work.
The breadth of jobs planners do is very wide, including working on the Olympic site, finding sustainable energy solutions, putting villages back together after the tsunami, creating better housing, managing flood risk, designing skateboard parks….and doing a whole host of other things you may not have thought of.
These days, town and country planners tend to refer to themselves as spatial planners, because there is so much more to their profession than planning towns. Sarah Foster works for the Peak District National Park Authority and says “I’m making decisions that influence one of the country’s greatest natural assets and I regularly get out and about on site visits in one of the most beautiful areas of the UK.”
A flight path, not a pigeon hole
Unlike the rigid entry requirements for some professions, people can come into planning from a wide variety of backgrounds – humanities, social sciences, design, law – and it’s an ideal next step for people who’re interested in geography but aren’t sure what to do with it. You don’t have to decide on a career in planning when choosing GCSE options; many people working in planning studied other subjects as undergraduates.
You can work and study at the same time, or start work now and study later, giving you flexibility. There’s also a path to professional qualification and Chartered Town Planner status through the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), the professional body for people working in planning. And the credibility and improved career prospects that come with it. Sean Taylor, a freelance planning consultant, says “Depending on your own personal aspirations and aims you can progress your planning career (whether in the private or public sector) to suit your own goals.”
Something for everyone
Because planning is so varied, there are jobs to suit all types of people. Whether you’re analytical and like working with detail, work well with people and want to get involved with your local community, or are into design and making things work better, there’s a role for you. Planners don’t all work for local authorities – they’re in the public, private and voluntary sectors, and working as self-employed consultants.
Planners have a huge amount of scope to develop their career, with options from urban design to environmental planning, regeneration, transport planning, heritage and conservation, and policy. Whatever field they work in, one of their top priorities is protecting the environment, and they are involved with promoting energy efficiency, finding sustainable solutions and tackling the effects of climate change. Jayshree Patel, a Graduate Planner at Savills, says “It’s an excellent career path to go down. Think carefully about what interests you as planning is extremely varied, but there’s definitely something for everyone.”
Planning: their career?
To help you understand the options and make a more informed choice, the RTPI has produced a new set of careers materials:
• Planning Your Career, a booklet that aims to answer all your questions about planning as a career path.
• Postcards and an A3 poster.
• Updated careers section on our website, www.rtpi.org.uk/careers where you can download copies of the materials.
You can also contact us at careers@rtpi.org.uk for copies of these materials or with any queries.
Planning – a career for people who want to keep growing after they grow up.
