Looking to Get Into Urban Planner Career Field

[Spoofy]

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[Innsertnamehere]

if you want your RPP you need to go to a university program. Undergrad degrees are offered at Waterloo and Ryerson, and a bunch of Universities offer graduate programs. Queens, Ryerson, UofT, York, Waterloo all come to mind, I think there are more too.

The college programs will only get you "planning technologist" jobs from my understanding, which are largely assistants to RPPs who do drafting, research, etc.

RPP means "registered Professional planner", though not absolutely required to practice, it is needed if you ever want to appear before the Ontario Municipal Board.

computer skills aren't needed for the university program, more so humanities. Geography, History, sociology classes are valued for High School.

[Simpseatles]

Hey Spoofy, glad to hear that you are also interested in becoming a planner! I'm currently in my final year of Waterloo's Planning program, so I can help you out a bit.

Just to echo what Innsertnamehere already mentioned to get your professional certification as an Registered Professional Planner (RPP, strongly recommended, although not yet required) you would need to either go to Waterloo or Ryerson for an undergrad, or to Queens, UofT, York, or Guelph for a Masters. I think my friend took the same, or a similar program at Fanshawe and got to go right into the 3rd year of their undergrad program after finishing, so I would look into that if you haven't already. Ryerson's program is slightly less theoretical, and more directly applicable from what I gather (they do projects with real clients), but the downside is that they do not have a co-op program. At Waterloo you will have at least 4, 4 month co-op placements.

In the meantime you should be able to join the Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI) as a student member. They are the people who grant the RPP designation, and they are always having events, seminars, speakers etc. that you can go to as a student. One event I went to was a guided walking tour of Wortley Village, for instance. Of course these are great opportunities to learn about the profession, network, and to otherwise just get your name and face out there!

In regards to your computer-related queries there is no need to fret about not taking computer science, unless you're interested in working primarily with GIS. Knowing very little about computer science has had no bearing on my success thus far. That being said, it would certainly be an asset if this is something you're interested in. Same goes for AutoCAD. At least in my experience we have mostly used Adobe creative suite programs (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop), and these are the ones that would be most beneficial to learn. But again, this is just my experience.