http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_planning

I was thinking about that when I was younger, building a city from the bottom-up...anyway..


Landscape, urban, city, and town planning are the disciplines of land use planning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use_planning) that explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities. Other professions deal in more detail with a smaller scale of development, namely architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture), landscape architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_architecture) and urban design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_design). Regional planning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_planning) deals with a still larger environment, at a less detailed level.
Another key role of urban planning is urban renewal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal), and re-generation of inner cities by adapting urban planning methods to existing cities suffering from long-term infrastructural decay.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_planning#cite_note-0)


so?


EDIT: continuing my title: Would this be a good job for the future, especially assuming the Oil Peak might happen (might make it easier for jobs with reorganizing neighborhoods, but it's also likely there would be smaller cites :(

I don't think you'll be getting too many bottom-up cities in the near future, the future will be in green tech and revitalizing America's urban centers, which hasn't been done for a long time. Civil engineering and some sort of environmental studies degree emphasis if it's practical.

thank you. Would you see a decrease in city size (as in population decrease for the metro area) however, or would it simply be more compact (the metro area population stays the same, simply more people live in the downtown or apartments, so on from the suburbs)?

thank you. Would you see a decrease in city size (as in population decrease for the metro area) however, or would it simply be more compact (the metro area population stays the same, simply more people live in the downtown or apartments, so on from the suburbs)?

Would it be relevant to your career goals? That's one for the historians.

here in the midwest rust belt especially, there should be projects coming in the next few decades to try and revamp all these dying cities filled with crumbling old industrial buildings and neighborhoods. they'll try to make it all into condos and trendy shopping malls. i know that's probably not something you had in mind, but i think the need will be there. civil engineering used to interest me as well, but i'm not cut out for engineering math. make sure you are.

edit: there's also some specialties in a geography major that deal with urban planning that would complement civil engineering nicely.

Civil Engineering goes beyond your description. You'll have options, within a variety of industries, if you go after that degree. It's an excellent degree.

Remember that it's not like SimCity.

University of Colorado has architecture degrees that have emphasis in urban planning, so you will be looking for architecture as a major. I was in their program but decided I didn't want to pursue architecture yet, so I changed to environmental studies in order to understand the issues involved with peak oil etc...

My friend is doing a geography major with a focus on urban planning.

He switched from civil engineering because he hated math, but from what he's told me, the job prospects are about the same with regards to urban planning specifically.