Planning Programs Using Social Media: A Useful Window for Prospective Students

As readers of this blog will know I encourage people to find out about planning programs in multiple ways. Reading the work of faculty is a crucial first step as is reading the program’s web site. Visiting open houses or connecting with students (programs often set up some kind of chat space around admission time) are also options. Increasingly schools are using multiple forms of social media to reach current students and alums providing a useful window onto the programs for prospective students. This list highlights a few of these sources used specifically by planning programs.

2 minute read

October 22, 2011, 9:17 AM PDT

By Ann Forsyth


As readers of this blog will know I encourage people to find
out about planning programs in multiple ways. Reading the work of faculty is a
crucial first step as is reading the program's web site. Visiting open houses
or connecting with students (programs often set up some kind of chat space
around admission time) are also options. Increasingly schools are using multiple
forms of social media to reach current students and alums providing a useful
window onto the programs for prospective students. This list highlights a few
of these sources used specifically by planning programs. There are many more of course, and
Jennifer Evans-Cowley has noted this in an interesting presentation as this
year's planning administrator's conference: http://www.slideshare.net/cowley11/acsp-administrators-social-media-21611:

  • Berkeley is an example of a program where social media seems
    to be organized at the college level. In the right menu of their main page at http://dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu/ one can
    click on icons for the college's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr
    accounts. While these sources have a lot of material from other departments,
    the YouTube section has a number of interesting videos from planning.

As I prepared this it occurred to me that it would be useful
to have a master list of such social media. Perhaps Planetizen can provide it
in their next guide to graduate education.

This is my September
blog, rather late due to travel.


Ann Forsyth

Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a professor of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. From 2007-2012 she was a professor of city and regional planning at Cornell. She taught previously at at the University of Minnesota, directing the Metropolitan Design Center (2002-2007), Harvard (1999-2002), and the University of Massachusetts (1993-1999) where she was co-director of a small community design center, the Urban Places Project. She has held short-term positions at Columbia, Macquarie, and Sydney Universities.

portrait of professional woman

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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