Welcome to Launching and Relaunching Your Planning Career
I'm Rick Willson
I'm a professor of urban regional planning at Cal Poly Pomona
in Southern California, and this course is designed to help
you strategize your or career path and advance in it
So the plan for the course is to address all the different
ways in which planners can use their skills in different
work settings to address the different work settings that
planners work within
So you can find one that suits you to use self assessment
tools to assess your skills and preferences
So again, you can find alignment between your personal characteristics
and your job
Also, we're going to address the real you, your values, how
to deal with doubt, and how to make plans for improving on
weaknesses. Then we'll move into a section that discusses
choices, how to decide about job offers, or changing jobs,
or choosing a graduate school.
For example
We will then address the resume, cover letter, and application
gain so you can succeed at that and also discuss how you
can cultivate and benefit from mentors, and we'll wrap it
up and put the pieces together
So you have a good direction for your career path into planning
or changing your career path within planning
If you're already started, I just like to introduce this
idea by sharing a career map that Miguel Vasquez developed
He's a colleague of mine, and he mapped out his various career
steps that led him to his current job as healthy communities
planners for the county of Riverside
In some ways, it's his dream job
But the path, as you can see, was crooked
Some jobs didn't work out
Some jobs did
He has a nontraditional planning job that's outside the typical
planner, one in current planning in a city
So he had multiple launches
He had a clear direction, but early on he was flexible
He had support from mentors, and he participated in professional
organization. So I think that's a great way of understanding
the career path
It's often uneven path and has twists and turns that you
don't expect in terms of my background, I've been teaching
at Cal Poly Pomona for 30 years
I also practice planning in Canada before I moved to California,
mostly in transportation planning.
I do research on parking and transit oriented development.
I have a blog on the EPA website launching Your Planning
Career, and this course is based on the first half of my
book, A Guide for the Idealist, Launching and Navigating
Your Planning Career.
So the planning career path is a wonderful career because
you're working for the public good while making a professional
salary. A lot of people have to save the world on their own
time, but we planners can save it at our job.
I think planning as a career leads to personal growth in
the various ways planners act as advisers, synthesizers,
and facilitators.
We learn things in our planning practice that I think help
make us be better people now planning has loose professional
boundaries. So the bad news is your grandparents probably
don't understand what you're doing, but the good news is
it's a fluid field, it's responsive and it's innovative.
So it means there's a lot of choices in your planning practice.
So why does there need to be a plant is, in course about
launching and relaunching your planning career.
I think planning is more varied than most professions, that
there are many career paths into the field.
And the good news is that you can find meaningful work that
suits your temperament, your values, and your skills.
The bad news, which is not so bad, is that you must reflect
and choose throughout your career.
So I think you are navigating in a moving stream rather than
seeing us having a career blueprint that you could actually
know where you'll be ten or 20 years in the future.
And really career planning is just like regular planning,
and we're making decisions and recommendations under conditions
of uncertainty.
The uncertainty is your goals, which may evolve over your
career changing practices in the field, new areas like climate
change planning come along, and the changing nature of work,
contracting and working in different kinds of organizations.
So that's our game plan for this course.
I'd like to welcome you to come along, and now we'll begin
to talk about what is your work.
Now I'd like to address the question, what is my work?
Obviously, if you're watching this course, you're interested
in urban planning, but there's lots of options for what kind
of work you can do as an urban planner.
So one way of looking at this is what is your passion?
Is it active transportation?
Is it sustainability?
It's important to know what your passion is.
But of course, then you have to translate your passion to
urban planning practice and match your passion with what
the world needs.
So I think planners underestimate the ways in which they
could use their urban planning, education and skills in the
workplace. And my purpose in this section is to try and widen
your perspective on ways you could be a planner in the world.
I've thought a lot about different kinds of planning work,
and I've organized it into three general categories.
One is where your main focus is people and equity.
A second is your main focus is place making and the environment,
and the third is where your main focus is systems and efficiency.
So let's look at that in a little more detail.
So in terms of people and equity, if that's your passion,
then work in advocacy, planning, maybe of interest, social
services, planning, environmental justice, and so on.
If place and environment is your focus, you may be interested
in urban design, tactical urbanism environmental planning,
hazard and resiliency planning those kinds of issues.
And if systems inefficiency is your focus that leads people
to transportation planning, infrastructure planning, GIS
analysis, and so on.
Now, I don't present these as they are mutually exclusive.
So my work in transportation planning falls under systems
and efficiency, but my desire to reform parking requirements
has an equity dimension in terms of enabling affordable housing
construction and an environmental dimension in terms of reducing
the environmental footprint of parking facilities.
But I think most people fit into one of these three categories.
The other thing is, there's lots of planning jobs that don't
have the name planner in the job title.
So under people in equity, you might be an anti poverty activist
or a legislative adviser in the area of place and environment.
You might work in a campus design and sustainability, or
a parks and recreation Department in systems and efficiency.
You might work with infrastructure engineers or be involved
in renewable energy projects.
So I would like throughout the course when I present these
tables for you to consider to pause the course at this moment
or come back to it and take some time reflecting on these
different categories.
I'm sure there are areas that I've missed, but my point here
is that there's a very wide range of work you can do with
your planning education.
There's another dimension as well what's your preference
is for effectuating change, and I have a little two by two
matrix that I like to use that reflects whether the way you
effectuate changes a planner is direct or indirectly, and
whether it involves monetary or non monetary strategies.
So, for example, if you think like an economist, you're probably
in favor of peak period road pricing to manage travel demand.
That's an indirect monetary strategy where changing prices
or taxes or incentives or disincentives changes behavior
in a way that more efficiently uses systems.
On the other hand, zoning is a regulatory approach.
That's a direct non monetary strategy where either prohibitions
or mandates are set up in the law.
So let's look at a simple two by two matrix here that looks
at the issue of dealing with water.
And if we're facing less predictable water supplies in the
future, how could we deal with that?
Well, the direct monetary strategy is the way an engineer
often thinks, let's build some dams, let's build water delivery
systems, let's make capital investments.
The indirect monetary is what the economists might do, which
is to say, let's price water so it's used more efficiently.
The direct non monetary approach would be regulations about
using water efficient appliances or caps on the amount of
water consumption.
And finally, the indirect monetary strategies are things
like marketing campaigns or education campaigns that help
people realize how they could save water.
So within a given issue, water planning water supply.
There are many ways of implementing change, and you should
also reflect on which of these four quadrants most interests
you and aligns with your skills and your temperament.
So how can you learn more about work options?
Some ideas are search out job descriptions.
Find the websites that have your kind of jobs listed.
Find respected organizations in this area.
See who's winning awards.
Seek informational interviews that is calling up someone
in an organization you're interested in, not for a job interview,
but to ask if you can meet with them for 20 minutes and talk
about what they do and kind of leave your resume at the end
of the meeting or job shadowing where you follow the planner
around for a day to see what life is really like in that
kind of work.
I also think you should be flexible in researching types
of work different from your first preference.
My career started out as a land use planner, and I kind of
fell into transportation planning and loved it, but I was
open minded enough to consider types of work that were different
from the one I started in chapters two and three.
I presented many, many choices in terms of the type of work
and the work setting.
In some ways that can seem overwhelming because there really
are a lot of choices.
So the question is, how do you find yourself a place within
those choices?
And in this area, I suggest you find the real you, which
may sound corny, but I encourage the use of personality assessment
tools such as the Myers Briggs type Indicator.
There is a version of it that's online that's free, called
16 Personalities that I use with my students.
It's important to say that these tools do not define you.
They don't have to be completely accurate.
Your type might change, but the point is, use them for reflection.
Try it and see what your type is and see if it seems true
to your understanding.
And then think about how that type influences the choices
you might make of type of planning, work or place that you
work. So this trash can I saw this summer has a sign on that
says no pets in this area, and I don't know what kind of
Myersbriggs type that is, but I think it's obvious that you
shouldn't put pets in a trash can, but let's move on.
So this test or any version of it assists you in understanding
your work style preferences and articulating them.
It will help you sort the types of work you're interested
in for fit, and importantly, it will help you correctly boast
about your strengths.
Often resumes present people as being able to do everything
equally well, and that's not really the case.
They can also make you aware of areas you want to prioritize
for professional development.
In addition, the test can help you understand other planners
you work with in team settings, other professionals.
If you're a manager, they can help you create balanced teams,
and they can help you manage effectively when you arrive
at that role in your career.
So these are some images from the 16 personalities websites
of different types.
They have 16, but divided into four groups.
When I survey my students, I find a lot of them are in the
diplomat category.
They want to mediate between conflicting stakeholders and
find an amenable solution, and I find others in the Sentinel
category. They want to fight for social justice and safeguard
the environment.
So these categories are listed when you take the test, and
then there's descriptions of what that type generally means.
And so there's a section on this is an example of the INFPs
in the workplace, so you can look at that and reflect on
whether that's true to your experience.
And if that's true, how should you direct your planning career?
So personality type may affect work preferences.
You might prefer to work alone or in groups.
You might prefer working at the desk most of the day, while
others prefer a lot of social interaction, it might affect
the amount of travel you want to do in the job and creativity
and innovation versus having regular, predictable processes.
So I recommend that you use these personality types as a
tool for reflection.
I'm not saying here that you should wait until you find the
perfect job.
Of course, your first job might not be the perfect job, but
these tools allow you to align yourself and work towards
a job that's the best fit, and when it's a good fit, you're
most satisfied and happy at work.
The last three chapters have discussed types of planning
work, types of organizations in which you could work, and
then using personality assessment tools to identify your
work preference styles.
The final step, I think, is finding the real you in the sense
of defining your values that drive you as an urban planner
and dealing with the question of doubt.
So let's get started with that.
The self assessment tools help you see the real you and organize
and target your job searches, but they don't indicate your
core values because different core values lead to different
career paths.
And also I'm going to address whether excess selfdoubt is
impeding you and how you can address that.
So let's examine values.
I have identified four core values that drive planners.
I didn't make these up.
These come from Plato and the ancient philosophers, but one
of them is care or love.
And if you're motivated by that, I suggest that you're going
to be interested in work involving human capital, helping
people dealing with social equity.
You might be a community organizer or a social services planner.
For other planners, justice is the strongest motivating value
that might lead to work in affordable housing or environmental
remediation or seeking funding equity.
And so you might be an affordable housing developer or a
social services planner.
Some planners are motivated by truth, and what I mean by
truth is sort of the scientific technical understanding of
the world, an accurate representation of reality, and that
might lead to environmental work systems, work modeling,
geographic information systems, and so on.
And finally, some of my planner colleagues are motivated
by beauty, which leads to urban design, place making aesthetics
sign regulation any number of things.
So as with all of these categories, they aren't mutually
exclusive. But you should reflect on what is your core motivating
value for being a planner, because that should influence
the type of job you seek a moment on.
The issue of doubt.
Doubt is not something people talk about much.
I certainly have doubt and experienced my career and have
just had to figure out how to deal with it.
So the thing about doubt, am I good enough for this job?
Should I go for this job?
Can I get into this grad school?
Can I perform is that you need to compare your doubt with
evidence of your performance, and that comes externally that
comes from grades in school job reviews from supervisors
and advice from mentors.
So I look at it this way.
If you have minimal doubt and low performance, you might
not be well suited to the job that you're in.
If you have excess doubt too much and you're a high performer,
you need to outsmart that doubt.
People often refer to a little bird sitting on your shoulder.
That's critical and saying maybe you can't do it.
So in that case, you need to outsmart that critical little
bird. I think the sweet spot is a realistic amount of doubt
because doubt fuels a desire for improvement within high
performance in the career path you've taken.
So that's the thing that planners deal with.
Writers deal with creative people deal with, and so learning
how to manage the little bird that says you can't do it is
an important aspect of progressing.
The other issue is response to criticism.
There are so many ways that you can interpret criticism.
Sometimes a supervisor is just testing you to see how you
do rather than criticizing you, but you might perceive it
as being attacked.
So you need to think of one of the greatest professional
qualities you can have is to accept criticism in an even
handed manner and make improvements based on that criticism.
So again, this relates to your relationship with doubt.
If the criticism is Invalid objectively, then it should be
ignored. If it's valid, it should be taken to heart and a
basis for improvement.
Yeah, you.