What Is City Planning? Careers and More
The concept of city planning arose in the United States to address an ongoing crisis: the spread of disease due to unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. Today, city planners face a new crisis: the increasing number of natural disasters and their devastating effects.
According to Climate Central, a nonpartisan organization of scientists and journalists who track climate change, 2025 was the third-highest year for billion-dollar climate disasters, just after 2023 and 2024. In 2025 alone, these events caused $115 billion in damages.
Today’s city plannersing needs to account for these environmental shifts and ensure cities are designed to have the infrastructure and resources they need to survive and recover from emergencies. With a Master of Science in Disaster Resilience Leadership (MS-DRL), city planning professionals can create urban areas engineered to weather disasters.
What Is City Planning?
City planning, also called urban planning, is the design, regulation, and development of land in urban settings. When a city is being planned, those in charge of its development must consider:
- How the land will look once development is completed
- How the plan will affect the city’s economic development
- How the planned city will affect the area’s natural environment
- How the community will engage with the city and its land after development
- How a city will develop disaster resilience and withstand emergency situations
The Origins of City Planning
In the United States, city planning became a priority in the late 19th century. A lack of environmental, health, and safety regulations had created dirty, unhealthy, and overcrowded cities, where illnesses like cholera and influenza spread quickly. City planning became an urgent health issue.
In response to the health implications of overcrowded cities, city planners worked with local governments to create zoning ordinances that kept residential development away from pollution-causing industrial development.
However, there was another health and well-being cost associated with the rise of zoning ordinances: As people had to move farther from their jobs, car dependency increased, walkability decreased, and both obesity and air pollution rose.
Today’s city planning focuses less on how to get people away from overcrowded cities and instead on how to make cities healthier, happier, and more community-centered.
Types of City Planning
City planning involves many competing interests. It requires considering the economic, environmental, and community engagement consequences of every decision made when developing urban areas. Different types of city planning focus on different parts of creating new residential, commercial, and industrial locations.
Land-Use Urban Planning
Land-use urban planning determines how land is zoned, with divisions for residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal buildings based on local laws and policies.
Master Planning
Master planning focuses on the long-term plan for the development of a city or town, creating a framework for the city’s infrastructure, land allocation, municipal resources, and residential, commercial, and industrial districts. Master planners picture the city’s future and ensure that plans to reach this future fall within zoning and infrastructure regulations and laws.
Urban Revitalization
Urban revitalization assesses a city or neighborhood that is in decline or has a particular problem, like a lack of efficient public transit, and develops plans to improve the city overall or address the specified issue.
Environmental Planning
Environmental planning bridges city planning and environmental preservation and conservation. Planners focused on environmental effects must consider how communities in their cities will interact with their environment, how the development will impact natural habitats, and how the city will recover from natural disasters.
Infrastructure Planning
Infrastructure planning focuses on the creation and impact of facilities and systems that serve the city, such as public transportation, school districts, healthcare facilities, road networks, and first-responder systems.
3 Career Paths in City Planning
Many roles work together to ensure a planned city fits the needs of the communities that will live in it, as well as the needs of the surrounding land and environment.
City or Regional Planner
City or regional planners develop plans for the use of land, resources, and physical facilities in cities and other areas. Using Geographic Information System (GIS) software, they incorporate information such as environmental study results and census data into comprehensive digital maps that guide the creation or revitalization of a location.
City planners work with developers, government officials, and other stakeholders to make recommendations based on laws and regulations regarding a city’s development and help communities manage their social, economic, and environmental needs.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual salary for urban and regional planners was $83,720 as of 2024. The BLS projects that positions for city planners are expected to grow by about 3% between 2024 and 2034, about as fast as the average for all careers in the U.S.
Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Officer
Environmental health and safety (EHS) officers working in city planning ensure that development and revitalization projects comply with occupational and environmental laws and regulations. They review city plans for compliance, discuss compliance status with key stakeholders and city planners, and continue to monitor the city’s development to ensure this status is upheld.
The median annual salary for EHS officers was about $89,400 as of April 2026, according to Payscale. The BLS, which includes EHS officers with occupational health and safety specialists and technicians, projects 12% job growth in the field between 2024 and 2034, much faster than the national average.
Community Development Specialist
Community development specialists play an important role in land-use urban planning and infrastructure planning. They are housing experts who work with city planners and government agencies to ensure cities have the proper resources to meet housing needs, such as zoning for affordable housing and community resources for homeless populations.
Community development specialists can also aid in urban revitalization and are often consulted to address ongoing housing crises.
The BLS reports that social or community service managers, including community development specialists, earned a median annual salary of $78,240 as of 2024. Positions are projected to increase by 6% between 2024 and 2034.
Plan Resilient Cities With Tulane School of Social Work
City planning developed out of a need to protect community health. Today, city planning must focus on a new need: to prepare communities to become more resilient in the face of disasters.
The Master of Science in Disaster Resilience Leadership (MS-DRL) program at Tulane School of Social Work prepares students to become informed, impactful city-planning professionals with the skills to develop resilient cities. In addition to learning key skills in disaster risk reduction, mitigation, and preparedness, students also develop a thorough understanding of city planning for disasters and how to develop systems that deliver resources in emergencies.
Find out how Tulane School of Social Work can help you do work that matters.
Recommended Readings
How You Can Build Social Work Skills for Leaders in a DSW
What Is Program Management in Social Work?
Sources:
American Planning Association, “Planning History Timeline”
Climate Central, “2025 in Review: U.S. Billion-Dollar Disasters”
Indeed, “How to Become a Community Development Specialist in 6 Steps”
Indeed, “Urban Planning Skills: Definition and Examples”
Payscale, Average Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Officer Salary
U.S. Bureau of Labor, Occupational Health and Safety Specialists and Technicians
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Social and Community Service Managers
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Urban and Regional Planners