How do Urban Planning professionals balance technical and soft skills?

"Who is my audience?' should really be one of the first questions urban planners ask themselves when approaching a planning project or challenge. Whether leading stakeholder or community outreach initiatives, or communicating results of technical analyses, knowing your audience and understanding how best to communicate with them is crucial to ensuring that your project and/or proposal is understood and that your client and/or stakeholders feel informed. Knowing your audience is also linked closely to Building Trust and connection with those you work with (i.e. clients, stakeholders, general public or otherwise), which is another important soft skill for urban planners.

It’s important to be grounded in the problem you are solving and/or the opportunities you are helping unleash. Whether it’s a technical or non-technical audience both need to: 1. Have a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities. 2. The solution should be crafted around intent - what do you want the user to experience, while respecting what’s valued by all (users/non-users)? Messaging related to these two aspects need to be consistent regardless of audience. Planning projects are often multidisciplinary, involving architects, engineers, economists and planners. Consequently, even tech-committees require concepts made easy for all disciplines to understand, engage and contribute effectively. SSS - Succinct Scientific Specific.

Knowing your audience - Planning from bottom, and giving power of decision making to the stakeholders. That summarises what knowing your audience is. As beautiful as planning tools are, engaging and knowing audience before a planning proposal is being drafted ensures the relevant stakeholders are engaged, which would translate to deployment of local knowledge in the planning process and further translate to a sustainable planning approach. When the audience are not engaged and known, there is every possibility that the sense of ownership has been taken away from the stakeholders hence the survival of the planned project is threatened

Empathy is key. Urban planning is the art of building places in which communities can flourish. So often urban planners forgets this. They rarely talk about community and often lack an understanding of what makes a place work for people. The urban planning process quickly descends into a numbers game, capacity studies, GIAs and efficiency. The scale, impact and longevity of the decisions made are so significant that a deep understanding of place and context is needed together with impactful engagement. The other key ingredient is making places that tread lightly on the planet. Start with a vision that integrates place, people and planet and a team with the skills to translate this into plans that inspire and you won’t go far wrong.

I have found that its usually one way or the other in the public-sector of the planning profession. You either find yourself speaking publicly often, and your co-workers or consultants are doing all of the technical work, and vice-versa. If your field requires technical explanation often, then there is typically one person in your office that is the spokesperson for the group. The best way to balance technical and soft skills is to go out and talk with the people using the services you provide. Become empathic, relatable, and ask them if you have completed the task properly. You cannot know the impact you are making if you can't envision yourself in your customer's shoes.

The technical skills and a sound foundation based on strong analysis are critical to the basis our recommendations. The soft skills including interpersonal, political savvy and balancing the contending groups are also critical to acceptance by the elected officials, the public and the various parties. Courage and character are also important in terms of standing up for what is right and letting the process take its due course. Knowing when to compromise and when to stand firm is an art. Many technical people are fearful of confrontations and being overturned. It is a question of balance. My bias leans toward actually getting things done in the community and not being totally focused on "process". Let's get outcomes.

Who owns and governs the city is the primary question to consider. Often, urban planners make the mistake of assuming that municipal and local authorities solely control the city's destiny. In reality, there are multiple institutions and individuals who wield influence over urban growth. To strategically promote development, it is crucial to identify these key players. Within the government, power dynamics among officials and political figures shape the course of action. Thus, it is of utmost importance to comprehend their perspectives and guide decision-makers toward a comprehensive development approach that effectively manages trade-offs. Such individuals can be catalysts for engaging with influencers from businesses, and communities.

The technological aspects of urban planning seem to always be changing but commitments to public health, safety and improvement remain core to the work (as subjective as these domains can be). Determining with communities the future they would like to work towards (as well as scenarios they hope avoid) for themselves and next generations is key. Urban planning should be about representing options and encouraging new perspectives.

Never, ever present a complete application-ready project to a community- people aren’t stupid and can spot a fake tick-box ‘consultation’ event a mile off. You know the ones, held on a wet Monday afternoon with minimal notice on page seven of the monthly community newsletter. Better to have drop in sessions when parents are home from work and make sure everyone, including their children, has their chance to say what they want and need. You can’t please everyone but you have to listen because sometimes you are told things that change everything you thought you knew. Have copies of everything to hand to scribble notes onto so you can sketch out ideas as you talk to find ways to problem-solve with people positively.

Never underestimate the value of pen on paper to illustrate solutions on the fly. Communicating along the way is just as important as presenting results at the end of a project.

Some of the most valuable information an urban planner (or anyone really) can have is honest feedback. I like to think of constructive feedback as like the 'mortar' between the building blocks of one's professional career, or, of a successful planning project. In my experience, opportunities for constructive feedback are few and far between, but when we do receive a nugget of wisdom in the form of feedback (positive or negative), we should welcome it with curiosity. Learning to deliver feedback is the other side of the coin, and is an artform in itself. Being about to accept and learn from, but also deliver/share constructive feedback are critical tools that should be in urban planners toolbox.

It’s taken me awhile (well, twenty-plus years) to accept feedback as a comment on how I’m doing (X) on my job, and not my worth as a person. Early in my career it was difficult to separate the two - my job was my self-worth. Now I know to seek the nugget of truth in every feedback session and then choose whether to make changes or not.

Always prepare your talk/presentation/discussion/meeting with time for feedback: it can be an interactive session (supported by online platform) in-between the talks and discussions, it can be a Q&A session at the end of the whole presentation (as the most popular approach), it can be an informal discussion during coffee break, or it can be a follow-up meeting. And we should be open-minded and with all comments that we might received

Working with communities and other stakeholders helps learn from their feedback. Feedback empowers urban planners with: 1. an ability to solve problems using a balance of technical competence, creativity, and hardheaded pragmatism. 2. an ability to envision alternatives to the physical and social environments in which we live.

The final users of an urban environment are citizens and they deserve to be listened. Populations are very diverse across the globe and quite often urban planning proposals are developed from abroad. It is therefore essential to grab all the available knowledge about similar operations in the area (to learn about successes and fails) and to engage with local communities. It is amazing how often we take things for granted and how biased our views can be. The entire purpose or feedback should be to enrich proposals balancing the technical knowledge of planners and the local needs and expectations.

In Urban Planning, assimilating diverse feedback catalyzes technical and performance enhancement. Scrutinizing feedback from various stakeholders unveils crucial learning vistas, empowering planners to hone their technical prowess and project efficacy. It morphs information into a power conduit, facilitating adept navigation of technical quandaries. Embracing feedback dynamics fosters continuous skill refinement, while robust stakeholder communication enriches planning processes with multifaceted perspectives, significantly elevating the sophistication and efficacy of urban planning solutions.

Filtering amongst feelings, concerns, and facts is key in collecting/understanding feedback. I try to peel back the layers of words I hear in search of the "real" concerns he/she may have.

You Don't Learn Feedback! You Document Them! You always think you will take feedback anytime. But you never know which feedback is your Gold Key to improve unless you improve and see the same thing in juniors! So take every feedback, document them, and then learn what to do about them!

One way to provoke interaction, genuine discussion and good feedback on, for example, any land use or zoning changes, or new development projects is to print readable maps that integrate information about the proposed changes and their spatial impact. And then, hang them on the walls where community planning meetings happen. Citizens who don't have knowledge of planning issues will ask what the changes mean, and this will be a great opportunity for technical staff to explain them in simple words, and annotate any feedback. These maps will also serve to spark discussion about the proposed projects or changes among those most knowledgeable about planning processes, primarily stakeholders.

I think it's worthwhile to follow up with your peers, clients, and members of the audience to hear how you went. I have heard, following a heated meeting with angry community members against our project, that other planners were sitting in the room, and they passed on messages that I did really well throughout that relatively stressful meeting/presentation. Being open to criticism (whether presented negatively or positively) is one part of the job. I had feedback from a colleague that, during a community meeting, I used a weird reference in a meeting (because I caught myself out in trying to describe something). So, I've learnt to practice what I want to say so those kinds of weird words don't get used.

Collaboration is key for urban planners and across the domain of urban planning which itself is a multidisciplinary field. It integrates professionals, educators, and surveyors who are specialized in a wide range of topics.

Participative approach is essential for urban planners, in order to get more ownership of the projects. What's more urban planning covers a lot of areas, so that collaboration and coordination is necessary

Collaboration is must with the beneficiaries, equally important to have them on board. Cyclic process of planning, feedback, evaluation and implementation, involves multidisciplinary collaboration vertically and horizontally.

Commonplace to every work environment: Focus on your strengths while you keep asking for contributions regarding aspects in which you have less or no authority.

Any urban problem involves people living with or around that problem. Those people see and record the minutia that make up the problem and the consequences. Those people are the greatest source of information for professionals to attempt a planned solution.

Communication and collaboration are key elements to succeed. At the same time - especially in Urban Planning - it is to important to always keep in mind that 'we' are doing it for the people. Too often the experts act as if they have all wisdom in hand, whilst the people who have to live and work in the places and spaces we create, have far more simple or different requirements. Therefor not only collaborate with other fields of expertise, but use the "wisdom of the crowd" as well and take it in as early as possible in the process.

One thing I found helpful is the transition from conventional collaborative approaches to leveraging AI in urban planning, optimizing multi-stakeholder engagements. Actually, I disagree with solely traditional methodologies, as smart control systems and AI ethics now drive a new epoch of socially just urban revitalization, embracing emerging linchpin objectives. An example I've seen is the integration of AI in deliberative planning, where intelligent algorithms augment stakeholder dialogues, ensuring a balanced optimization of urban spaces vis-a-vis social equity goals.

Urban planning is grounded in a multidisciplinary approach. In its early stages, the practice was mainly spearheaded by architects and civil engineers. Post-World War II, visionaries like Jane Jacobs introduced new perspectives, leading to interdisciplinary approaches. This brought experts from environment, economics, and sociology into the fold. It's evident that cities cannot be planned in isolation; they demand diverse viewpoints and methods, all aiming for the shared objective of cities for all. Thus, urban planners must encourage contributions from a range of experts, whether they specialize in climate change, emerging technologies, or the business sector. A great city is a collective endeavor, and true success lies in collaboration.

One of the worst things as a profession to arise in urban planning is the mentality of Us vs Them. Public vs private sector. The greedy developer pitted against the lazy civil service worker. As the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey rather than a stick. An open discussion can achieve so much more than a terse email, on either side of a proposal. And even if there may be no common ground whatsoever, holding yourself to a firm standard and maintaining your professionalism will benefit everyone in the long term.

Keeping up with trends is key, but trends change quickly and not all of the trends form a recipe for every city – after all, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to city development.

Suivre les tendances c'est bien pour ce qui est de la mode... L'urbanisme c'est plus que cela. C'est capter les changements de mode de vie, de mode d'habiter de notre société. Comprendre le pourquoi de ses changements et savoir s'adapter. C'est comprendre les enjeux en matière d'énergie et de climat. C'est s'informer sur la résilience territoriale. Oui, un urbaniste est au courant de l'air du temps sur bien des matières autre que la couleur à la mode des châssis PVC... Se tenir au courant des changements en continu est indispensable. Le jour où on ne sait plus suivre le mouvement, soit on devient réac, soit on prend sa retraite...

Prioritize trends that align with your interests or passions. Any other trends will only serve as distractions and waste your precious time. With so many trends vying for your attention, it's crucial to stay focused and not lose sight of what truly matters.

There is always room for improvement and innovation. Keeping a pulse on the industry, either directly through peer networks, or through other media and reporting, is greatly important. Planners who settle into the way things are and a "not in my city" mentality are doing a disservice to everyone they represent or work for, as much as themselves. Without innovation and planning for future growth in new ways, the role devolves - at best to a maintenance technician, at worst to an obsolete bureaucrat to be targeted for budget cuts. Always asking what others are doing to keep forward momentum and keeping up with those trends is vital. Moreover they can provide solutions to problems that have not been realized yet!

When talking of urban planning, I don't believe in trends. Urban planning responds to numerous aspects of a specific place. Every project is a whole new story.

That is why I believe that a balance between new and traditional methods, in addition to making multiple communication alternatives available to people, and always offering updated historical records of all the historical documentation on the organization of a space, is the best way in which we can integrate people so that they can participate, understand and contribute to the urban planning process of their city.

Planning reform is an ongoing consideration. Being aware of changes that are coming, that are out for comment, and that have come into effect is an essential part of the job. But its also being aware of other trends - real estate market trends, economic cycles, what other industries are focusing on, and the future considerations of what is likely to impact the planning sector in the future (like climate change on our cities and regions; or sea level rise on our coastal environments and communities; or regulatory changes influencing how projects are approved). Planning relates to so many other sectors, it can be a bit overwhelming. Focusing on trends in areas you're passionate about will be useful to help become a subject matter expert.

Adaptability and Flexibility are essential. The field of urban planning is dynamic, influenced by evolving societal trends, technological advancements, and changing policy landscapes. Urban planners must be adaptable and embrace lifelong learning to stay updated with new tools, methodologies, and emerging issues. flexibility enables us to respond to shifting urban contexts and emerging challenges.

The best and timeless trend for any city is to keep people safe on the streets, give them as much comfort as you can with green areas, and move them as quickly as possible with easy information regarding transportation and public events or places. Their tastes and desires will do the rest of the job of slowly shaping the city.

First develop your experience and technical skills. That will take a great amount of time. Then you take as much time as you can to teach what you've learned. If your charisma holds and your authority prevails, you'll be a natural leader.

Developing leadership skills is indispensable in urban planning, where professionals often lead diverse teams and stakeholders to achieve common goals. Effective urban planning leaders possess a visionary outlook and strategic thinking, enabling them to formulate and communicate clear objectives, while adept communication skills are crucial for articulating complex ideas and facilitating diverse stakeholder discussions. Strong decision-making, team-building, adaptability, and the ability to advocate for community interests are also paramount.

There's natural leadership that some people just have (depending on their personality) and there's ways to learn how to develop leadership skills. I think finding a mentor, talking to people in your business, and speaking to peers/colleagues can help you find out about your impact and your leadership skills. There are also some free courses online that help you with other facets such as mindfulness; finding your purpose; public speaking; and other components that also feed in towards leadership.

Listen, like with a doctors stethoscope, lightly touching the ground, to what the community needs, by way of access (movement to, across and through), cultural /social amenities (to develop a creative and empathetic environment, where life can be paused and synergised), what the land / space can sensibly accommodate and what the local materials, supply chain and craft can bear and support as a sustainable solution.

Something yet to be mentioned under leadership is self-discipline. You are there to set a standard for everyone you lead. Why would someone be enthusiastic about working on a project when you couldn't care less? Why should they push for good quality work when your own output is barely acceptable? More specifically for business owners, also remember that your employees do not have the same priorities as you. You may want your business to be the next big thing, but they may just want to be paid on time and to go home at 5 p.m. to friends and family. There's nothing wrong with that and a good leader will recognise that everyone has a different motivation for doing things.

Urban Planning Professionals often helm large scale urban transformation projects which also have onboard multiple specialists with diverse views. To steer the vision of the project, influence decisions and oversee the different dimensions of the project, urban planning professionals need to develop leadership skills. While leadership skills may not improve your technical skills as an urban planning professional, it definitely helps in creating a larger impact on the project and on society. Skills such as negotiation, presentation and ability to communicate clearly are essential when working on urban projects involving diverse stakeholders including government officials, bureaucrats and people's representatives.

I believe skill of leadership is crucial to success of any management senior level .... but the most important is that what kind of leadership that you believe in , is it a democratic, bureaucratic, or maybe dictator approach, so your preference or believe will shape your leadership skill

Leadership in social impact goes beyond overseeing projects; it's about inspiring change and advocating for those without a voice. As urban planners with a focus on social impact, our leadership involves ensuring that every project we undertake or advise on has the community's best interests at heart. It's about leading with empathy, understanding, and a deep-seated commitment to creating positive societal change.

One of the fundamental reasons why leadership skills are crucial for urban planning professionals is the multidisciplinary nature of their work. Urban planners frequently collaborate with diverse teams comprising architects, engineers, economists, and policymakers, among others. To effectively manage these teams and coordinate tasks, leadership skills are indispensable. Having a clear vision of the project's objectives, motivating team members, and delegating tasks efficiently are key leadership qualities that can greatly impact the success of urban planning initiatives.

Urban planning professionals require a unique blend of technical and soft skills to excel in their roles. By possessing these essential skills, urban planners can effectively collaborate with stakeholders, analyze data, engage with communities, manage projects, adapt to be changing circumstances, work with interdisciplinary teams, and build strong relationships with stakeholders.

Concepts, understandings and standards change over time. They can always be learned, deployed and revised. Times change, places change. What's most often overlooked is that our built and natural environments are shared, negotiated spaces in constant flux. In many ways, this is what makes them so special. Empathy is the key skill for any planning professional.

A successful urban plan should come with a solid development plan describing the added value through phasing, time-frames, statistics and sound financial structure. At the end of the day, an urban plan is a living document subject to numerous changes along the way. Therefore, decision-making should lay on technical + financial assessments.

Consider that the most important thing you can remember in planning is that its as much about “not knowing, as it is about knowing.” Every situation is different and while the field is grounded in concepts and knowledge and experiences, different markets and cities are never predictable or one in the same—and therefore its ok to not know the answer and deeply investigate to try to figure it out. Additionally, the moment you do figure it out, its already changing. The plan is important, but what’s the plan for the market after the initial plan is implemented? Thinking beyond the initial plan is true value added thinking and necessary for more durable and lasting solutions.

The ability to mediate conflicts in a constructive and engaging manner Plan development affects many different stakeholders with different goals and interests. A successful planning process should “leave no agenda behind” and should integrate issues and promote collaborative solutions for complex problems, which can only be delivered through cooperation of different stakeholders.

Some other skills for urban planners to consider: 1. Ability to analyze demographic information to discern trends in population, employment, and health. 2. Knowledge of plan-making and project evaluation. 3. Mastery of techniques for involving a wide range of people in making decisions. 4. Understanding of local, state, and federal government programs and processes. 5. Understanding of the social and environmental impact of planning decisions on communities.

Urban planning is a long game. Individual buildings take up to 10 years and changing traffic patterns can take almost as long. For many cities, their trajectories have changed in the past 3 years, but projects that were in flight are still headed in the same direction. Office occupancy, traffic patterns, public transportation usage, and other factors have all changed. It's important to realize that you can steer the boat rather than continue towards a destination that no one is actually going anymore. Talk to residents. See what they need going forward. And then make course corrections.

Merging strong communication skills and technical knowledge is something I strived for throughout my academic career and my budding professional career. In order for our goals in urban planning to be successful and connect with the communities our initiatives are impacting, we have to communicate efficiently. From messaging to outreach, we have to ensure what we're saying, doing, and teaching resonates with diverse communities. We can apply technical knowledge, like GIS for example, to further build upon that, using said technologies for storytelling.

As a field, "Planning" is so much more than the word implies. Beyond just mapping out a path to a desired result, we are also implementers, legislators, litigators, designers, safety experts, managers, leaders, reviewers [enforcers], ethnographers, sociologists, data gatherers, data visualizers, and so much more. The wide reach of urban planning is what drew me to it as a profession and it keeps me engaged. Some fall into a niche but it's hard to not at least approach your area with a breadth of perspective.