Why Aren’t There More Planners?

Planning is a growing field with relatively highly levels of pay—so why don’t more people know about it as a viable option for a prosperous and fulfilling career?

“The median income for urban planners in the U.S. is US$78,500. Employment in the field is projected to grow by 4% between 2021 and 2031 from 41,900 jobs in 2021,” according to an article by Stephen Kofi Diko, Danilo Palazzo, and Leah Hollstein for the Conversation.

Moreover, the field also suffers from a lack of diversity in its ranks. According to the article, “in the U.S., of the 40,000 or so members of the American Planning Association, only 13% are nonwhite, compared with 24.5% of the U.S. population. There are also about twice as many male urban planners as there are females in the profession,” according to the article. (The article also notes that similar trends hold true in the profession around the world.)

The lack of attention to the profession is noticeable in declining enrollments at planning programs around the country as well. So why don’t more people know about planning as a prosperous and fulfilling career?

The authors report that planning faculty at the University of Cincinnati in 2016 launched the Activate Community Empowerment (ACE) initiative in an effort to raise awareness of the field with a three-week outreach program conducted with high school students at Hughes STEM High School in Cincinnati. The source article, linked below, reports on more of the results of the experiment, which produced results in the community while introducing the high schoolers to the field.

The authors of the article suggest three steps for educators to take to raise awareness about planning: 1) Partner with schools to provide real-world experiences, 2) Make urban planning part of the high school curriculum, and 3) Support prospective and existing urban planning students.   

The article is informed by the authors’ book, Routledge Companion to Professional Awareness and Diversity in Planning Education, which was published in April 2023, and research published by the Planning Practice & Research Journal in June 2020. More steps for raising awareness about the field are included in the book.