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Urban and regional planners

Also called Urban planner, City planner, Regional planner, Land use planner, Community development planner

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 44,230 US urban and regional planners, with median pay of $89,320 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 500 from 1920, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for urban and regional planners: Web GIS, Google Earth, and online public engagement platforms, 2005 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 3.9% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

  • 58% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
  • 0.13 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013

Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.13. BLS counted 35,940 of these jobs in May 2013 and 44,230 in May 2025 (+23%, a change derived by Future History).

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Urban and regional planners: jobs and pay since 1920 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-3051

Chicago

Future History. "Urban and regional planners: jobs and pay since 1920." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-3051.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_19_3051, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Urban and regional planners: jobs and pay since 1920}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-3051}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
19001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as City planner / town planner (informal, before professional organization)
Known then as City planner / regional planner (ACPI era, physical-design focus)
Known then as City planner / community planner (AIP era, expanding to social planning)
Known then as Urban planner / urban and regional planner (Great Society expansion era)
Known then as Urban and regional planner (AICP certification anchor, APA era)
Known then as Urban and Regional Planners (BLS SOC 19-3051)
Known today as Urban and Regional Planners (BLS SOC 19-3051)
Projected to still be called Urban and Regional Planners (BLS SOC 19-3051)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
44K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$89,320
Est.

≈ $87,030 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1893

The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago, designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. The "White City" of monumental neo-classical buildings, landscaped grounds, and pedestrian-scaled public spaces draws 27 million visitors and inspires the City Beautiful movement. It is the first large demonstration that deliberate comprehensive design can transform the experience of an urban environment, planting the seed of what will become the planning profession.

Beat · 1907

Hartford, Connecticut establishes the first permanent official city planning commission in the United States, marking the shift from ad hoc civic improvement committees to institutionalized professional planning authority within city government.

Beat · 1909

The First National Conference on City Planning and the Problems of Congestion convenes in Washington D.C., May 21-22, with 43 attendees. Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett publish the Plan of Chicago, the first comprehensive regional plan for a major American city. The same year, the first university course in city planning is offered at Harvard. All three events together mark 1909 as the founding year of urban planning as a recognized professional field.

Beat · 1917

The American City Planning Institute (ACPI) is founded on May 7-9 at the Ninth National City Conference on City Planning in Kansas City, with 52 charter members and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. as first president. The institute holds its first formal meeting November 24, 1917 in New York City. Urban planning now has a professional association, a defined membership, and the beginning of a shared disciplinary identity distinct from architecture, engineering, and social work.

Beat · 1924

The U.S. Department of Commerce publishes the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (1924) and the Standard City Planning Enabling Act (1928), model laws that states can adopt to authorize local governments to zone and plan. These acts create the statutory scaffolding on which the planning profession will operate for the rest of the century. By 1930, most states have enacted zoning enabling legislation based on these models.

Beat · 1965

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and dramatically expanding federal funding for urban renewal, Model Cities, and comprehensive planning grants. Federal planning assistance programs require local comprehensive plans as a condition of funding, creating a national demand for trained planners at every scale of local government. Planning school enrollment surges through the late 1960s and 1970s.

Beat · 1969

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is signed into law, requiring federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of major federal actions. NEPA and its state analogues (California's CEQA, 1970) transform planning into the compliance backbone of development review: every significant project now requires an environmental impact report, and planners are the professionals who prepare, review, and certify them. NEPA adds a permanent stream of planning work to the federal and state project pipeline.

Beat · 1978

The American Planning Association (APA) is formed on October 1, 1978, from the merger of the American Institute of Planners (AIP, formerly ACPI) and the American Society of Planning Officials (ASPO). The new organization creates the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) as its professional credentialing arm, establishing the first formal national certification standard for planning practitioners. AICP certification, requiring education, experience, and a written examination, becomes the profession's primary credential.

Beat · 2010

The 2008-2010 Great Recession produces a sharp contraction in planning department hiring as local government revenues decline with falling property values. Planning positions are cut or frozen in hundreds of jurisdictions. The recession reshapes the profession's workforce pipeline: a generation of planning graduates enters a severely contracted job market, driving some toward private-sector consulting and others toward hybrid data-science and analytics roles. The recovery through the 2010s produces sustained demand growth, culminating in the housing-affordability-driven planning hiring wave of 2015-2024.

Beat · 2021

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, also called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) is signed, directing $550 billion in new infrastructure spending across transportation, water systems, energy, and broadband. Major infrastructure investment of this scale requires environmental review, community engagement, and planning-level compliance work. Infrastructure-related planning demand joins housing affordability compliance as a structural demand driver for urban and regional planners through the mid-2020s.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace urban and regional planners? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+3.9%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 19-3051 (Urban and regional planners): 45.8 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 47.6 thousand in 2035, a change of +1.8 thousand (+3.9%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.9% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
58%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 19-3051.00 Urban and Regional Planners. Shown: human-rated β = 0.58, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.273 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.886; GPT-4-rated β 0.477. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment"
2013 study · Probability of computerisation (2013 model)
13%
probability
What this measures

Published appendix value for SOC 2010 19-3051 Urban and Regional Planners: probability of computerisation 0.13, rank 184 of 702 (rank 1 is least computerisable). Frey and Osborne estimated in 2013, with a Gaussian-process classifier on O*NET variables, how likely the whole occupation is to be technically automatable over "some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two". It is a probability for the occupation, not a share of tasks and not a forecast of jobs lost.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for urban and regional planners

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereDraft general plan elements, specific plans, policy documents, and staff reports using ChatGPT or Claude as a writing assistant: paste structured data (policy frameworks, community goals, demographic summaries, environmental findings) and prompt the LLM to generate first-draft prose for land use elements, housing programs, climate action sections, or circulation policies

Draft general plan elements, specific plans, policy documents, and staff reports using ChatGPT or Claude as a writing assistant: paste structured data (policy frameworks, community goals, demographic summaries, environmental findings) and prompt the LLM to generate first-draft prose for land use elements, housing programs, climate action sections, or circulation policies; iterate with refinement prompts to match the jurisdiction's adopted style; verify all factual claims against source data; apply professional editing for statutory compliance, internal consistency, and community-specific context. APA and practitioners confirm this workflow compresses what formerly took three days to an afternoon.[2],[12]

Where your edge is

LLM-drafted plan language is fluent but frequently imprecise on regulatory terms of art: "shall," "should," "may," and "must" carry distinct legal implications in general plan policy that LLMs do not reliably distinguish. Always have a planner with statutory compliance expertise review any AI-drafted policy language before adoption; once a policy is adopted into a general plan it has legal weight for consistency findings. Build a personal prompt library of jurisdiction-specific style guides and approved policy language patterns so AI output requires less structural correction.

AI is sitting alongside you hereEvaluate site feasibility for housing, mixed-use, and commercial development proposals using TestFit Site Solver: import parcel data and zoning parameters

Evaluate site feasibility for housing, mixed-use, and commercial development proposals using TestFit Site Solver: import parcel data and zoning parameters; generate 100+ building layout iterations optimizing unit count, parking ratios, setbacks, and floor area against the applicable zoning envelope in seconds; review cost-ranked alternatives; export preferred concepts to Revit, AutoCAD, or SketchUp for further development. TestFit reports an 8.9-hour savings per feasibility study and 78% improvement in analysis accuracy compared to manual iteration; planners in Delaware, Ohio used it to evaluate 100 iterations of a mixed-use corridor proposal in a single session.[9],[2]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

TestFit optimizes against numerical zoning constraints but cannot evaluate design quality, neighborhood compatibility, or the human experience of the resulting built environment. Planning commissions regularly deny code-compliant projects on design grounds (massing, transition to adjacent single-family, materials, activation of ground floor). Use TestFit to rapidly identify the feasible envelope, then invest your professional time in the qualitative analysis: how does the massing relate to the street, does it block light to adjacent residential, does it contribute to the urban form the community described in the general plan vision?

AI is sitting alongside you hereReview residential and mixed-use development applications for zoning compliance using Symbium Plancheck: upload project scope

Review residential and mixed-use development applications for zoning compliance using Symbium Plancheck: upload project scope; the platform applies formal-logic rules to the local zoning code and generates a compliance checklist, identifies required planning forms, and drafts the initial comment letter in minutes rather than the days of manual code-lookup the same review previously required. Planners review AI-generated compliance findings, apply discretionary judgment to edge cases (nonconformities, variance criteria, design standards), and issue formal staff recommendation. Symbium operates in 271+ jurisdictions and launched Plancheck for Bay Area jurisdictions through ABAG in 2024.[8],[13],[14]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Symbium's formal-logic engine is more reliable than LLM-based code interpretation but its accuracy depends entirely on whether the jurisdiction's zoning code has been correctly encoded in the rule base. For municipalities with recently adopted zoning amendments or overlay districts not yet reflected in Symbium, the AI output will be incomplete. Always cross-reference Symbium's checklist against the current adopted ordinance for the specific parcel, and document any code sections Symbium did not flag: legal challenges to planning decisions hinge on the adequacy of the review process, not just the outcome.

Where urban and regional planners go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

  • Construction Managers
    US median pay
    $114,990 (May 2025)
    BLS outlook 2025-35
    +9.1%
  • Sustainability SpecialistsNo timeline for this role yet
  • Data Scientists
    US median pay
    $120,230 (May 2025)
    BLS outlook 2025-35
    +34.6%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Construction Managers

Urban planners who work on capital improvement programs, redevelopment projects, or public-private partnership development gain significant project-delivery exposure that enables a pivot to Construction Management or Development Management roles. Planners understand entitlement, permitting, CEQA/NEPA compliance, community engagement, and the policy framework within which projects are built: skills construction managers at public agencies need but rarely have. The transition brings planners closer to project execution and away from statutory review workflows, which is favorable from a CRI perspective given the statutory-automation risk noted above. CRI delta is slightly negative because construction management has higher physical-context requirements that AI tools are beginning to address (DroneDeploy, OpenSpace).

What you'd add
  • · Construction contract administration: AIA A201, owner-contractor-architect triangle, change order and RFI management
  • · Project scheduling: Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project for CPM scheduling, earned value analysis
  • · Construction cost estimating: RSMeans data, quantity takeoffs, contractor bid analysis
  • · Building codes and inspection: ICC International Building Code, ADA, fire life safety requirements for occupied facilities
  • · Capital program management: multi-project portfolio tracking, CIP budget forecasting, bond program administration
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of urban and regional planners changed since 1893?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Hand drafting, survey maps, and zoning ledgers (pre-computer planning era)

    The first generations of urban planners worked with pencil, pen, and paper: hand-drawn base maps, hand-plotted property boundaries from survey records, and typed or handwritten zoning ordinance text. A comprehensive plan for a mid-sized city required months of drafting work and produced blueprints and exhibits that had to be physically reproduced for distribution to elected officials and the public. The zoning code was a typewritten document with hand-drawn district maps. GIS, aerial photography (available from the 1930s onward), and photogrammetry gradually supplemented hand drafting, but the fundamental workflow was a human producing a physical drawing from survey data.

  • Mainframe spatial data systems and early SYMAP (Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics, 1963)

    The Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics, founded by Howard Fisher in 1965, produced SYMAP (Synagraphic Mapping System) in 1963, the first widely distributed mapping software capable of running on institutional mainframes. Planners at major university-affiliated agencies and large city offices began experimenting with computer-generated maps and tabular data analysis for the first time. SYMAP and its successors (GRID, 1967; ODYSSEY, 1977) were not user-friendly: they required punched cards or batch-job submission and produced output on line printers rather than plotters. But they established the conceptual framework that geographic data could be stored, queried, and visualized computationally, a framework that GIS would realize thirty years later.

    Effect on the work

    Early computer mapping was accessible only to planners at major urban research institutions or metropolitan planning organizations with computing resources. It had no measurable effect on the typical city planning department workflow in this era.

  • ARC/INFO workstation GIS (Esri 1981) and PC-based land use analysis

    Esri released ARC/INFO, the first commercial GIS product, in 1981. By the mid-1980s, ARC/INFO was running on Unix workstations at metropolitan planning organizations, state transportation departments, and large city planning commissions. For the first time, planners could maintain a digital base map with linked attribute databases: a parcel map that knew zoning designations, assessed values, ownership, and land use. The query capability was transformative: questions that previously required days of manual map overlays ("which parcels within 500 feet of the proposed transit corridor are zoned commercial?") could be answered in an afternoon. ARC/INFO was expensive and required specialized training, limiting adoption to well-resourced agencies.

    Effect on the work

    GIS reduced the time required for complex land use analysis from weeks to days at agencies that adopted it. It shifted the labor-intensive drafting work away from technicians and toward analytical tasks that required more professional judgment, beginning the long process of reorienting the planner's productive capacity toward interpretation rather than production.

  • ArcView desktop GIS (1992) and internet-accessible parcel data

    Esri released ArcView GIS in 1992 and sold thousands of copies in the first six months. By the mid-1990s, ArcView had made desktop GIS affordable and accessible to any planning department with a PC budget. This was the decade in which GIS moved from specialized tool to core competency: planning job postings began requiring "GIS proficiency" and university planning programs added GIS coursework to their curricula. Esri released ArcGIS 8.0 (ArcMap) in late 1999, combining ArcView's accessibility with ARC/INFO's analytical power. County assessors began publishing parcel data on the internet; planners could now download a city's entire parcel fabric and begin analysis the same day.

    Effect on the work

    ArcView democratized GIS across planning departments of all sizes. Planners who had relied on outside consultants for spatial analysis could now do it in-house. The profession's technical baseline rose: by 2000, GIS literacy was an expected competency for entry-level planners, not a specialist skill.

  • Web GIS, Google Earth, and online public engagement platforms

    Google Earth launched in 2005, putting aerial imagery and 3D city views in the hands of the public for the first time. Planning public hearings changed: residents could now navigate to their neighborhood on a projected screen and immediately understand what a planner meant by "the proposed development footprint." Web GIS portals (ArcGIS Online launched 2010) allowed planning departments to publish interactive maps that the public could query without downloading software. Online engagement platforms (SurveyGizmo, Mindmixer, and later Bang the Table/Engagement HQ) began replacing paper surveys and in-person comment cards for comprehensive plan updates. The planner's outreach toolkit shifted from flyers and public meetings toward digital channels with data dashboards.

  • Purpose-built planning AI (UrbanFootprint 2020, Replica 2019, TestFit 2018, Symbium 2024, Autodesk Forma 2023)

    Between 2018 and 2026, a wave of purpose-built AI platforms reshaped specific planning tasks at a pace no prior technology cycle had matched. UrbanFootprint (2020) consolidated more than a hundred million parcel records with climate hazard and demographic vulnerability layers, compressing weeks of data assembly into hours. TestFit (2018) generated zoning-constrained building layout iterations in seconds. Symbium Plancheck (2024) applied formal-logic rule sets to zoning codes, reducing days-long permit review to minutes. Autodesk Forma (rebranded from Spacemaker, 2023) provided real-time environmental analysis (sun, wind, noise) for masterplan proposals. PublicInput's GPT Comment Analysis (2023) scanned thousands of public hearing comments in seconds. APA practitioners confirmed in 2025 that general-purpose LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude) were compressing three-day general plan drafting tasks to an afternoon. The critical structural limit on all of these tools: the planner's statutory decision-making authority, community accountability, and professional ethics cannot be delegated to software.

    Effect on the work

    These tools collectively shifted the planner's productive capacity away from data assembly and toward interpretation, judgment, and community engagement. Analysis that required a junior planner one to two weeks now takes hours, freeing time for the tasks AI cannot substitute. Whether this drives headcount growth (more analysis per planner) or contraction (fewer planners needed) remains an open empirical question as of 2026; BLS projects modest growth through 2034.

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Urban and Regional Planners employment and pay by year

On record since1893
Latest US employment44,230 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$89,320 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+3.9% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

  • Canada (NOC 21202)

    Employment, 2020
    19,490, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 21202 Urban and land use planners, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
    Median pay, 2020
    C$86,000, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 21202 Urban and land use planners, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
1920500n/aEst., Mystic Stamp Discovery Center Researched contextReport
19505,000n/aEst., Oxford University Press Researched contextReport
197016,000n/aEst., History of urban planning (Wikipedia) Researched contextReport
198022,000$24,000Est., BLS FRASER archive (employment) Researched contextEst., University of Missouri Libraries (pay) Researched contextReport
200028,850$46,500BLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
200330,770$51,440BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
200431,140$53,450BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
200531,650$55,170BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
200632,640$56,630BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
200735,040$57,970BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
200837,120$59,810BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200938,950$61,820BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201038,830$63,040BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201138,320$64,100BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201237,620$65,230BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201335,940$65,650BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201435,820$66,940BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201535,480$68,220BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201634,810$70,020BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201735,310$71,490BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201837,840$73,050BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201938,560$74,350BLS OEWS May 2019 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS 2019 (pay) Official statisticReport
202038,190$75,950BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202138,940$78,500BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202239,880$79,540BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202342,690$81,800BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202443,040$83,720BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202544,230$89,320BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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