Urban planning is a rapidly changing field. It has been in constant flux since its inception in the early 20th century, and as our cities change, so too does our profession. 

This year, faculty in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning have made significant strides to ensure that planners are prepared for career success. Faculty interviews with The Daily Illini revealed upcoming changes like a new introductory Geographic Information Science course and new major concentrations. 

But how do these changes measure up to students’ needs, and what else should be done to ensure that the faculty vision corresponds with student expectations?

Ben LeRoy, academic adviser and instructor at DURP, said that he’s “been focusing on the redesign of (the) curriculum, repositioning (it) to more effectively meet student interest, while also making sure that we have sufficient instructional capacity.”

LeRoy’s redesign is a part of the department’s larger mission to continuously improve the program. It also responds to students’ concerns brought up last spring. 

Last spring, students wrote an open letter to the department advocating for more emphasis on ArcGIS, visual communication skills and better communication between faculty and students. It addressed a rising student sentiment that argued for more emphasis on technical skills earlier in the program — introducing a different level of challenge. 

To learn more, The DI pushed out a survey* to all urban planning students, available from March 3 to March 27. I found that students want more challenge and more unique classes. When asked if each urban planning class felt unique and nonrepetitive, only a third of respondents agreed. 41% disagreed.

When asked which courses felt repetitive in particular, one sophomore put it simply: “UP 101 and 203 (felt) like a nothing burger.” 

Additionally, many students said they wanted to be challenged more in their studies.

When asked if they felt adequately challenged in their coursework, a third of freshmen and sophomores agreed, while 31% said they were not challenged enough. Among juniors and seniors, nearly half said that they slightly agree with the level of challenge, but 41% said they disagreed. 

One senior said they felt the least amount of challenge in classes “when we’re just listening or writing essays but not applying our work.” 

These types of theory courses make up 27 out of 41 undergraduate courses offered this spring and the upcoming fall. Six are workshop courses and eight are skill based. The theory-like, history classes are information dense and heavy on essays and presentations. 

Jake Pinholster, dean of FAA, said he’d like to see DURP add “more project-based and intensive learning experiences,” as well as “more workshops and more field projects to get students to actually be out in the fabric of society.”

Workshop-style classes that Pinholster referenced are only offered for upperclassmen. 

Additional workshops, especially for freshmen or sophomores, would better equip students to communicate in an increasingly visual world and teach them how to combine technical skills with theory earlier in the program, something the open letter advocated for. 

As it stands, visual tools, like Adobe Creative Suite, are taught in junior year courses like UP 312: Communication for Planners and UP 347: Junior Planning Workshop. Both classes require intensive use of the software, but students enter these courses without any prior knowledge, and professors are forced to make up for lost time by teaching the fundamentals.

If students learn these applications earlier, additional time could be spent on in-depth projects, and 100-200 level courses could take advantage of a more knowledgeable cohort.

Rather than an essay or presentation for an ecology class, an assignment could instead ask students to map flood hazards, create a graphic showcasing urban waste cycles or put together a diagram describing how urban sprawl affects natural areas. To add onto a standard presentation in a transportation class, one could put together a visualization of a street cross-section or map out transportation inequalities. 

There’s a happy medium that exists between the current curriculum and the dean’s guidance, as well as theory and application courses. This is what Marc Doussard, professor and head of DURP, and DURP faculty are working towards. 

“We want a simpler curriculum, some cleaner undergraduate concentrations … we want to have more workshops and applied courses,” Doussard said. “Students know what they need. We’re trying to have better choices that meet people where they are.” 

LeRoy said these choices will culminate in three new bachelor’s concentrations: housing, community and economic development; environmental planning and design; and transportation. Two former concentrations — which focused on social justice and global cities — will be incorporated into the new ones. 

Other changes include a new introductory ArcGIS course. It will become a core degree requirement in the 2027-28 academic year, along with an advanced skill degree requirement. Students will choose between taking a course in digital storytelling, urban data science, advanced GIS or community engagement. 

Both the introductory GIS course and the advanced skill degree requirement aim to increase the role applied knowledge has in our program. 

“That’s a job skill,” Doussard said, referring to applied courses. “That’s what makes you good at going into a new situation and dealing with all the open-endedness and everything else.” 

Andrew Greenlee, director of Graduate Studies, said he also desires to create “more opportunity for students to learn through practice” by adding a capstone pathway that “focuses on workshops and applied and engaged learning.”

These proposed changes will hopefully lead to long-term benefits. When students learn technical skills and start workshops earlier in the program, they will be capable of tackling harder projects later in the program than otherwise could be achieved. This is because technical skills take time to develop, especially learning how to effectively combine theoretical knowledge and visuals. 

The fact that the department is striving to make the changes indicates its desire to address student concerns and prepare them for a rapidly changing field. 

But the work is never over! 

As these changes come to the curriculum, it will be essential for the faculty to continually speak with students and gather their input and recommendations. We may not yet be professional planners, but we live through the curriculum every day. Students’ voices are fundamental to program success.

Below is a culmination of students’ recommendations, along with suggestions that The DI compiled in reference to students’ survey responses.

Student improvements 

Some additional improvements that respondents wanted include more interactive work, more in-depth teaching on niche topics, opportunities for researching personal interests in class and more studios.

“It feels like we are always talking about transport planning and walkability and redlining but never really diving deep about anything,” one anonymous surveytaker wrote.  “I wish we would delve into the hows and whys, I wish we would do more case studies.” 

Another respondent wrote that they’d like to see more rigor, more hands-on assignments and more implementation of urban history and theory.

There was a common desire for stronger emphasis on software skills and learning them earlier in the curriculum. 

Student survey suggestions

Reduce the amount of repetitive topics. Based on survey results, the following course pairs were identified as overlapping in content:

• UP 136: Urban Sustainability & UP 340: Planning for Healthy Cities
• UP 230: Transportation Planning: Fundamentals and Innovations & UP 430: Urban Transportation Planning
•  UP 101: Introduction to City Planning & UP 203: Cities: Planning and Urban Life

Up the challenge:

• Reduce the rigidity of assignments and make them more explorative. Provide students with a learning experience, not a box to check off
• Students should interact with the community more. There should be more discovery, more communication with local leaders and organizations. Students should get out of the classroom and engage Champaign-Urbana on a regular basis
• Create a departmental culture of iterative learning. The learning process requires constant refining and optimization. Mix up the usual essays, discussion posts and presentations with more in-depth, local research projects and visualization assignments

Teach technical skills earlier:

• An introduction to Adobe Creative Suite, graphic design and hand drawing should be taught earlier — just like the new introductory ArcGIS course
• Add more visual communication skills into assignments. Charts, diagrams, infographics and learning why certain visuals are more effective than others should be prioritized within the first two years
• We should be able to use all the tools available to us from the very beginning of the major, and they should be incorporated into every class — including 100 and 200 level courses

As DURP faculty transition the curriculum into its next phase, it is important to recognize that there is not a single consensus on how an entire program should be taught. Each professor, for instance, comes from a different background, and there are a million different possibilities to accomplish the same goal.

The important thing to remember is that we are all working toward that same goal. We all are a part of one big (but sort of tiny) planning family.  

“My favorite part about this role is getting to know students … getting to support students and faculty, getting to know each other, to learn together and to work together,” Greenlee said.

*Of the 33 undergraduate and graduate students surveyed, two respondents were freshmen, 11 respondents were sophomores, 10 were juniors and seven were seniors. Three respondents were master’s of urban planning students. No Ph.D. student responses were recorded. 

Joe is a junior in FAA.

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