A thread for urban planning and transport courses.
You can do urban planning at any university, although each university seems to take a slightly different approach to their degrees. For example, Griffith seems to focus more on architecture/urban design approach, especially in first year where they get you to focus on your drawing skills, while at the same time you can pick a transport planning major (which isn’t really that much, just a bit of project management and engineering thrown in - you do Transport Planning as a trimester long course as a core unit).
QUT on the other hand has less focus on drawing skills and more on policy, analysis and history in the first year. You do one urban design course, but that’s not until year 3 or 4, and one transport planning course in year 2.
USQ seems to be more on the side of geography in planning, which is a little peculiar, although you do have the option to study on line (QUT, Griffith, UQ are all on campus only), however, there are a few courses in the degree where you have to attend a mandatory on campus week long workshop in Toowooomba, so if you’ve got the funds or a place you can crash at in Toowoomba for a week or two during your degrree, then that’s an option, otherwise, you’re better off just going to Griffith, QUT or UQ.
One benefit to Griffith is that it has the Cities Research Centre with some well known urban planning lecturers who appear in the media quite often, otherwise, QUT tends to be more hands on that UQ from what I’ve heard. QUT also gives you the option to do a second major or two minors to supplement your urban planning degree, which isn’t available at other unis apart from Griffith (second major only, no option to do two minors).
EDIT: Griffith by the way has a trimester long GIS course, which is incrediblly handy if you are wanting to do mapping. QUT doesn’t do that, but just enbeds it across the entire degree, you don’t do it as its own subject at QUT, which I think is a bit of a drawback.
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I thought I would add my personal experience with urban planning and the courses at university, and my previous background in the public service.
I started with Urban Planning (after quitting Transport Planning and finishing off a role in a Not for Profit, and after dabbling in other things at uni to see where I best fit), but realized during my first year that I was much more interested in the social aspects and impacts of urban planning and design, instead of the technical aspects, so I’m in my second year now of studying Social Work instead, where I’m able to study how people’s external environments cause impacts to them on a social and psychological level, on top of studying policy.
From my experience in doing a year of urban planning at uni and hearing from other students who have studied it, I found that most people end up in their first gig of evaluating DAs at various councils (which I was told can be quite boring as most DAs usually consist of people wanting to add a pergola to their house, or a new garage), and they typically start getting these roles during their degree. It wasn’t until later in their career paths that they got a chance to do more policy type roles or actual design or leadership roles.
You don’t get much flexibility as a Town Planner with evaluating DAs from what I was told by others, as you are fixed to the relevant Acts, Council rules and the City Plan, that limits how much say you get. Bigger projects would go through multiple teams, it’s not just yourself working on it.
From what I was told, if you studied law or added law to your urban planning degree, it might lead to more interesting stuff like being able to play with the City Plan, make recommendations etc. One thing the Lecturer’s did say was critical was to have a broad liberal study base, ie: don’t just focus on urban planning, but look at psychology or sociology, law etc to supplement it.
One of my Tutors also pointed out that urban planning had its base established in the realm of the health sector, ie: fixing cities to make them more healthy and sustainable to live in. (this also played into my personal decision to switch to Social Work instead of doing Urban Planning only).
In terms of Transport Planning, you don’t need any specific degree to be a Transport Planner (known as a Network Planner). I never had a degree when I started in 2005, friends of mine who currently work as Planners at TL don’t have degrees in Urban Planning either, one has a degree in Electrical Engineering, the other has a degree in Justice. When I met a Manager at TL recently, he made it clear that you don’t need any sort of specific education to be a Transport (Network) Planner.
From my personal experience, the role mostly focused on project management, responding to letters from the public via the Minister’s office, and developing the budget for the area you are in. Timetabling, creating new routes, adjusting old routes, analysing patronage etc, made up a portion of the role, but it’s not the entire role. It normally took about 12 months to go from nothing to a new service change (eg: new route/s), so around 1/4 of that time would be the actual design phase, rest of the time was either patronage/route analysis, finishing off a previous service change (proofreading pubic timetables, cross checking connections etc), writing business cases or responding to correspondence from MPs/Minister’s office.
Stuff like new developing major infrastructure ideas came more from Consultants who have Civil Engineering backgrounds and education, not from Planners per se (although we would have input in the teams, the ones leading the teams weren’t always us).
If I was fresh out of high school and wanted to work on new infrastructure, coming up with ideas, evaluating those ideas etc, I wouldn’t study urban planning, but instead study Civil Engineering, in hindsight, it’s more difficult, but it gives you more authority to evaluate whether a new tunnel or a new busway is a good idea and how it might work, and whether it’s physically and financially viable and physically possible, unlike Urban Planning which boils down to a project manager role in a lot of circumstances.
Ultimately though, most of the stuff in the public service is advisory, ultimately, especially for major projects, the ones who give the go ahead for this stuff to happen is politicians, namely Cabinet. So if you really want to have a say in what infrastructure the city has, get into a political party, get elected, then get a Ministerial role.
Being in the public service is great and has its rewards, but you can get shot down by the Minister or their staff if you have this grand idea that they don’t find politically interesting or decent for them.
Anyway, I hope this helps from my perspective for anyone who is interested.
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