Urban and Regional Planners
Skills & Knowledge
Most Important Skills for Urban and Regional Planners
- Reading—Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work related documents.
- Making Decisions—Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most appropriate one.
- Thinking Critically—Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
- Understanding a System or Organization—Determining how a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, and the environment will affect outcomes.
- Evaluating a System or Organization—Identifying measures or indicators of system performance and the actions needed to improve or correct performance, relative to the goals of the system.
- Learning New Things—Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
- Listening—Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
- Solving Complex Problems—Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
- Speaking—Talking to others to convey information effectively.
- Writing—Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.
Most Important Knowledge Areas for Urban and Regional Planners
- Geography—Knowledge of principles and methods for describing the features of land, sea, and air masses, including their physical characteristics, locations, interrelationships, and distribution of plant, animal, and human life.
- English Language—Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
- Customer and Personal Service—Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- Administration and Management—Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
- Education and Training—Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
- Law and Government—Knowledge of laws, legal codes, court procedures, precedents, government regulations, executive orders, agency rules, and the democratic political process.
- Sociology and Anthropology—Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures and their history and origins.
- Mathematics—Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.
- Personnel and Human Resources—Knowledge of principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.
- Design—Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.
Interests
Different careers may be a good fit for your personality or interests. This career is:
- Investigative—Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
- Enterprising—Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
Learn more about your interests. Take the MnCareers Interest Assessment.
Describe Your Skills
People who have worked in this career typically perform the following tasks.
These statements can help a prospective employer understand what you can do, on a resume or during an interview.
- Developing objectives and creating strategies to achieve them.
- Communicating with people outside your organization.
- Collecting information from different sources.
- Working directly with the public.
- Communicating with supervisors, co-workers, or people that work under you.
- Making decisions or solving problems.
- Creating and maintaining interpersonal relationships.
- Keeping up-to-date with new knowledge.
Careers that Use Similar Skills
The following careers use skills, knowledge, and abilities that are similar to those used for Urban and Regional Planners.
View more careers in the Government and Public Administration cluster
View more careers in the Planning pathway
This page includes information from the O*NET 24.2 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Source: You can learn about our data sources in the About Us section.
