About Planning & DURP

"Urban planning is used loosely to refer to intentional interventions in the urban development process...The term 'planning' thus subsumes a variety of mechanisms that are in fact quite distinct: regulation, collective choice, organizational design, market correction, citizen participation, and public sector action." --Lewis D. Hopkins, Urban Development: The Logic of Making Plans

"So much of the nation's wealth is tied up in badly designed communities, inhuman buildings, and commercial highway crud that we cannot bring ourselves to imagine changing it. But time and circumstances will change our ability to use these things, whether we choose to think about it or not. What will become of all the junk that litters our landscape?" James Howard Kunstler, The Geograpy of Nowhere

"To understand the city and to be able to work on it and with it, we need to see it as a concatenation of man-made, willed things--things that add up to a texture of places. Places in turn are composed of buildings and streets and parks, which are ordered and decided upon by more or less empowered individuals for varying, often imcompatible reasons. Power may be theirs by popular vote, by professional authority, or because they have been able to buy it. This means--or it should mean--that all those involved may be influenced by arguments or pressure." --Joseph Rykwert, The Seduction of Place

About the Profession

The planning profession is concerned with analysis of the forces that influence the growth and development of cities, regions, and rural areas, with the formulation of plans and policies to meet the needs--physical, social, and economic--of an increasingly urbanized society, and with the implementation of those plans and policies toward the end of ensuring a livable, humane and equitable built environment. Planning is an essential function at all levels of government--local, state, regional, and national--but is carried out as well by virtually all organizations and institutions. Demand for well-trained professional planners is strong in both the public and private sectors.

Historically, a majority of the graduates of planning schools have pursued careers in public planning agencies (city, metropolitan area, county, state, or regional); in private consulting firms; or in university-based teaching and research positions. In addition, planners frequently find employment in a wide range of organizations including, for example, housing agencies; community and neighborhood development corporations; health, employment, education, and criminal justice planning agencies; economic development agencies and organizations; international development and technical assistance programs; federal agencies; foundations; and private development firms and consultancies.

As a profession, planning is both an art and a science. It demands technical proficiency and an ability to envision alternative physical and social environments. Effective planners are also able to communicate ideas, work with diverse constitiuencies, and negotiate outcomes in highly politically-charged contexts. Planners usually begin their careers as specialists in particular sub-fields (e.g., land use planning, environmental planning, housing, community development, economic development, etc.), but as their careers advance they must be able to act as generalists, drawing on and influencing the work of engineers, architects, landscape architects, developers, policy analysts, and other planners to shape the form and functioning of cities and regions. Planning is an excellent career choice for those who seek to exercise leadership that yields tangible results for communities and the environment. Study in planning is also excellent preparation for students wishing to pursue careers in law, public administration, policy or other related fields, or who wish to go on to graduate study in the social sciences.

About DURP

The University of Ilinois has a long and rich history in the training of urban and regional planners, dating back to 1913 when Charles Mulford Robinson, one of the era's most distinguished planners, was appointed Professor of Civic Design in the University's Landscape Architecture Division. At that time, only the University of Illinois and Harvard University offered courses in urban planning. In 1945 the University authorized a master's degree in urban planning, and in 1953 an undergraduate degree was established. Both programs were offered in the Department of Landscape Architecture until 1965, when the Department of Urban Planning became its own academic unit. The Department established the Ph.D in Regional Planning in 1983.

The Department of Urban and Regional Planning is one of the largest planning programs in the U.S., and it is one of very few programs that offers three degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Planning, a Master of Urban Planning, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Regional Planning. It also offers a Minor in Urban Planning, as well as joint master's degree options, including with Law, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture. The size of the planning faculty, and the Department's presence on an Urbana campus with eleven colleges, nearly 3,000 faculty, 41,000 students, and over $330 million in funded research annually means that Illinois planning students have an extraordinarily rich array of learning and research opportunities available to them.

Located in the College of Fine and Applied Arts along with the School of Architecture and Department of Landscape Architecture, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning includes design components in its curricula through its own teaching and via linkages with those units while providing a planning education with firm roots in the social and policy sciences. The Planetizen 2007 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs ranks Illinois among the top ten programs in the United States and the leading planning program in the Midwest.

Learn more about our department milestones, faculty, degree programs, facilities, and alumni.