Can you plan for the cities of the future?

Without Town Planners, we wouldn’t be able to live in the houses we do, travel on the roads, visit the local park, swimming pool, cinema, concert, our favourite restaurant, or go shopping.

Town planning is essentially the spatial application of our everyday needs, our wants and desires and the context of our ever-changing lives. So that requires us to plan appropriately for future development, taking account of how new technological advances will change the way we will and will want to live our lives.

Very rare (if ever) would we hear a child profess age 7, 11 or even 17, that when they grow up they want to be a Town Planner. If they realised the profession gave them the power to influence change and behavioural patterns of their friends, family and their own future maybe this would influence them?

Yet in an age when the cost of going to university is now a significant influencing factor, perhaps we should be publishing the opportunities presented by the profession more, the challenges and the opportunities… indeed the RTPI state:

“Planning is the fourth most successful degree subject for finding work after completion and as a town planner you'll have the potential to build such a varied career.”

Whether this is providing long term strategic advice on the direction of a Development Plan or holding court in a planning committee, the importance of a Town Planner is significantly under-valued. We planners do hold the key to those new homes in more ways than one.

Yes, we are working to unlock the housing crisis but more importantly, we are reflective planning for towns and cities of the future, and planning the infrastructure requirements that will allow us to travel with ease to our homes, parks, jobs and shops or indeed promoting quality and longevity of buildings which could become the Conservation Areas of the future!

Without new Town Planners, undoubtedly the profession will die!

The www.rtpi.org.uk provides a wealth of advice on the key actions to take to achieve RTPI status.

Bramhall Town Planning is wholly supportive of the RTPI’s ambassador scheme to promote the profession earlier on in schools, to children considering their future career paths and indeed the opportunity to follow a professional apprenticeship route.

A large part of Bramhall Town Planning's work, that I am incredibly passionate about, is encouraging young planners not only into the profession but ensuring they understand their importance, their worth, their value and the opportunity they are presented with.

As a result, Bramhall Town Planning is launching our sister website 'Future Planners' as a portal of advice for the promotion of young planners embarking on so many firsts.

Future Planners will not only encourage quality and professionalism from the next generation of Town Planners, but it will seek to create the next generation of Planning Managers, Planning Directors and indeed Chief Planning Officers, to ensure the profession's longevity.

Without you, the profession we are so very passionate about will die!

We can share our knowledge and skills with you to help support your early career progression and ultimately seek to secure RTPI success.