City and Regional Planning

Overview

City and regional planning students at the Knowlton School are out-of-the-box thinkers who love cities, towns and regions. They are tomorrow’s innovators who care about the quality of life for everyone. They are interested in developing economies at all scales, providing affordable housing, promoting green energy, preserving threatened land, building great public transit, and developing sustainable cities and regions.

Great planning creates communities that offer better choices for where and how people live. Planning helps communities envision their future and find the right balance of new development, essential services, environmental protection and innovative change. Planning can take a variety of forms, including policy recommendations, community action plans, regulatory and incentive strategies, historic preservation plans, redevelopment plans, smart growth strategies, economic development strategic plans, site plans, urban design plans, and disaster-preparedness plans.

Possible careers

Graduates of the City and Regional Planning program from The Ohio State University are also prepared to pursue a master’s degree in city and regional planning or a related discipline and are competitive for admission to national and international graduate programs.

Ohio State graduates of the city and regional planning program have been successful in finding positions throughout Ohio and across the country, including Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Orlando, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

Professional planners create a broad vision for the community. They also research, design and develop programs; lead public processes; effect social change; perform technical analyses; manage; and educate. Some planners focus on just some of these roles, such as transportation planning, but most will work at many kinds of planning throughout their careers. Planners work in every state and around the world. They work in rural and suburban areas and large cities. They work in the public sector within federal, state and local governments. They also work in nonprofits and within the private sector in real estate development, planning firms, landscape architecture and architecture firms.

Planners in academic practice teach and conduct research in the professional programs offered by colleges and universities across the country, and they may work professionally in university campus planning offices.