ACSP planning schools teach the history, theory, research, and real-world planning techniques needed to be an urban planner. A career in urban planning is focused on making the world a better place for current residents and future generations. 

Planning is a professional field that takes a specific approach to solving problems. All applied professional fields of practice follow a specific approach to solving problems. For example:

• Architecture follows a design approach when looking at the built environment.
  
  
• In urban planning, we take to the plan-making process to solve urban and regional problems. Plan-making is a distinct and reflective process that includes: problem definition, research, visioning, community  participation, developing goals and objectives, program development and evaluation, implementation strategies, and critical assessment of the built and un-built environments.

Graduates with an urban planning degree find a lifetime career moving among one of three general areas. 

• First, and the most common urban planning career is working in public government with most of the work in city and county planning agencies. At the most local level of government, planning tasks are specific to a particular city or community within a larger city and address a wide array of land-use and physical planning topics (zoning, main street corridor development, tree canopy plan) and community-based issues (access to jobs, walkable neighborhoods, accessible community health care). Planning at higher levels of government (state and national) take on more general planning issues that include topics such as affordable housing, coastal development, and disaster planning.
  
  
• Second, and the fastest growing urban planning field is private consulting. Here, urban planners work for a private firm that is contracted by city and county governments to execute specific planning tasks. Examples of private consulting tasks include creating a city comprehensive plan, development of a traffic oriented development (TOD) site plan, or Geographic Information System (GIS) land use forecast analysis to help a city better anticipate future residential developments. Urban planning in the private sector can be very fast-paced and exposes the planner to a wide variety of communities across the U.S., Canada and abroad.
  
  
• The third most common area where urban planning graduates find jobs are with non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that focus on a particular community or sub-field in planning. Exciting aspects to working with nonprofits and NGOs are the diversity of topics and locations where you can work. Urban planning in this sector can be extremely specific such as working for a bike advocacy non-profit organization in northwest Arkansas coordinating with community groups and property owners to develop a bike path. Or, it can be very intersectional and nation-wide such as developing Kāinga-based community affordable housing and education projects in New Zealand.

To research current jobs available in professional planning or planning academia see:

• American Planning Association Job Board
• Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Career Center