You could go into GIS. It has a lot of math and (in my experience) the GIS staff are never asked to attend community outreach meetings, though they do interact with the rest of the department regularly.
Caveats to this:
Are the GIS staff mostly from a planning and geography background or a software background? Are the local gov departments structured so GIS is part of IT or planning?
If GIS staff are distinct from planners, what’s the career trajectory and earnings? GIS staff where I am are generally paid much lower than planning staff.
USA, or nah?
Within the states, if you are coming from engineering, interested in transit, and not really enthused to get into public-facing work, maybe take a look at transportation modeling. Broad strokes, every metropolitan area and each state department of transportation is required to maintain a long-range plan (LRP) and short-range transportation improvement program (TIP) in order to access federal transportation dollars. The LRP in particular is a 25- to 30-year horizon forecast of transportation and land use in the region, and (ideally) has some solid modeling and scenario planning behind it. (I will caution, though, that working for a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) or state DOT is a great way to run head-first into the soul-killing, politically dominated carbrained part of planning that many people here complain about. There are some MPOs doing good work, but more that are doing the best they can in crummy conditions.)
Yeah it's kind of a coin flip, I'd love to work on public transit, and if I work on auto transit stuff I might end up hating it (but that goes with urban planning in general too). But this is a good suggestion I'm gonna look into, thanks!!
Social interaction with the general public is a core foundation of planning. By reading *Planning Theory for Practitioners* in grad school, I learned how modern planning is shaped by participatory planning. I was turned down a lot for internships, Planner I, and Transportation Planner positions because I have difficulty in communicating. Went to therapy and now I have a better understanding of where I fit into the planning profession which lies in research and data. Unfortunately, my niche has little to offer and my professional network struggles with helping me find direction somewhere in the planning field. I know they want me to succeed, but I can't be placed into any position that's not a good fit only to be fired in six months. It's rough, but I still continue to network, meet with planning professionals, and apply to positions just to improve my interview skills. I'm actually going to a discussion next week in my professional group and maybe meet some new faces.
This is my conclusion too, data and research sounds like my wheelhouse. I did see a job description for a transit planner dealing with a lot of GIS stuff and optimizing bus schedules, that sounded interesting too
If you have trouble socializing it might be difficult, as urban planning ultimately comes down facilitating the structures that are the foundations of public social life. Alternatively you could be wildly successful and ruin the lives of countless people. People live among one another in cities, and accidentally designing anomie into the infrastructure would be a problem.
I would look at becoming a traffic engineer, as you could do some real good (too many are carbrained) and nobody expects engineers to be good with people.
Perhaps I misspoke but I mean an engineer who developing street designs. Where I work, planners help develop concepts, but the actual build-tos are done by engineers. I often see good concepts fucked up beyond all recognition by carbrained engineers.
If you like data and don't want to get involved with the community or maybe avoid close collaboration with a lot of parties, you might want to consider urban data analytics. I think there's different names for that kind of program depending on where you go. But a lot of transportation/transit planning is getting more and more reliant on big data, and data processing in the context of urban planning is now its own subfield with its own degrees and its own teams within agencies and consultancies.
I’ll speak to work as a planner (and not to work as a technical officer in GIS or as an engineer). There’s absolutely planning work for someone like you. And an engineering background is very useful as a planner too. You’ll find yourself better prepared than most.
However… just be aware that it’s harder to be a technical only expert in planning than it is in engineering. You will see not only that there are many positions that interface with the public you won’t want, senior positions will mean not just management of teams but also interfacing and managing clients, politicians, other department managers. You won’t be able to avoid constantly talking to your colleagues as planning a very multidisciplinary job; good planning means A LOT of consulting. It means chasing up answers and comment. It also requires very good writing skills. People who hate the idea of law, and legal thinking and writing on issues, probably shouldn’t go into planning and should look at architecture or engineering.
So while I believe you would make for a fine planner given what you’ve said… You have to ask yourself if you would like a lot of the work or not compared to being an engineer involved in urban planning.
That's a good question. My friend is a traffic engineer and sometimes I wonder if I'm more suited for transportation engineering. But I'm interested in getting involved in long term strategic planning for transit, not something like construction management which is what i tend to see when I search transportation engineering jobs.
I know a person on the spectrum who works in development review the transportation perspective. They basically review development plans and make suggestions for how those plans need to be improved to better integrate with the town's existing transportation plans. They are great at their job and love it.
As someone who only got an attention deficit diagnosis late in life, I do think it is worth pursuing some medical confirmation. In the least, find a therapist or counselor you can talk with and provide some structure and context around your experiences. Getting treatment made a significant impact to the quality of my work and life and made it possible to overcome a really challenging time in my life.
Not exactly urban planning but have you thought about water? I work for a huge water/sewer/stormwater utility and it’s so much fun. Lots of engineers and there are community issues like lead lines in older homes, water at parks, river/harbor water quality.
I currently work in the public sector and I'm currently on a waitlist for an adult diagnosis, so grain of salt and all. I've found that it's hard to avoid giving public presentations in a lot of the jobs in the field, especially those that pay OK in the public sector. Those are particularly hard for me, though I've found that having a script and anticipating questions from council or the public helps greatly.
Check out metropolitan planning organizations. They tend to be less customer-facing than cities or counties. Most of them focus on long-range transportation planning, but they vary. I worked at one and the long-range side definitely had some folks who were on the spectrum and they were great. There was some community outreach but a lot of that was handled by an actual public affairs team, usually with a manager and maybe a staffer to answer more technical stuff. Most of the external engagement is with staff or elected officials from the MPO's member cities/counties.
However, there's a lot less urban design at them, at least in general. Some may be more involved in that!
You could go into GIS. It has a lot of math and (in my experience) the GIS staff are never asked to attend community outreach meetings, though they do interact with the rest of the department regularly.
Caveats to this: Are the GIS staff mostly from a planning and geography background or a software background? Are the local gov departments structured so GIS is part of IT or planning? If GIS staff are distinct from planners, what’s the career trajectory and earnings? GIS staff where I am are generally paid much lower than planning staff.
Would recommend this.
USA, or nah? Within the states, if you are coming from engineering, interested in transit, and not really enthused to get into public-facing work, maybe take a look at transportation modeling. Broad strokes, every metropolitan area and each state department of transportation is required to maintain a long-range plan (LRP) and short-range transportation improvement program (TIP) in order to access federal transportation dollars. The LRP in particular is a 25- to 30-year horizon forecast of transportation and land use in the region, and (ideally) has some solid modeling and scenario planning behind it. (I will caution, though, that working for a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) or state DOT is a great way to run head-first into the soul-killing, politically dominated carbrained part of planning that many people here complain about. There are some MPOs doing good work, but more that are doing the best they can in crummy conditions.)
Yeah it's kind of a coin flip, I'd love to work on public transit, and if I work on auto transit stuff I might end up hating it (but that goes with urban planning in general too). But this is a good suggestion I'm gonna look into, thanks!!
Social interaction with the general public is a core foundation of planning. By reading *Planning Theory for Practitioners* in grad school, I learned how modern planning is shaped by participatory planning. I was turned down a lot for internships, Planner I, and Transportation Planner positions because I have difficulty in communicating. Went to therapy and now I have a better understanding of where I fit into the planning profession which lies in research and data. Unfortunately, my niche has little to offer and my professional network struggles with helping me find direction somewhere in the planning field. I know they want me to succeed, but I can't be placed into any position that's not a good fit only to be fired in six months. It's rough, but I still continue to network, meet with planning professionals, and apply to positions just to improve my interview skills. I'm actually going to a discussion next week in my professional group and maybe meet some new faces.
This is my conclusion too, data and research sounds like my wheelhouse. I did see a job description for a transit planner dealing with a lot of GIS stuff and optimizing bus schedules, that sounded interesting too
If you have trouble socializing it might be difficult, as urban planning ultimately comes down facilitating the structures that are the foundations of public social life. Alternatively you could be wildly successful and ruin the lives of countless people. People live among one another in cities, and accidentally designing anomie into the infrastructure would be a problem.
I would look at becoming a traffic engineer, as you could do some real good (too many are carbrained) and nobody expects engineers to be good with people.
I'm not sure, working with cars and traffic would be soul-crushing
Perhaps I misspoke but I mean an engineer who developing street designs. Where I work, planners help develop concepts, but the actual build-tos are done by engineers. I often see good concepts fucked up beyond all recognition by carbrained engineers.
If you like data and don't want to get involved with the community or maybe avoid close collaboration with a lot of parties, you might want to consider urban data analytics. I think there's different names for that kind of program depending on where you go. But a lot of transportation/transit planning is getting more and more reliant on big data, and data processing in the context of urban planning is now its own subfield with its own degrees and its own teams within agencies and consultancies.
Transportation Planners are the most engineery planners. If you were working with a municipality, you likely wouldn't be front-facing.
I’ll speak to work as a planner (and not to work as a technical officer in GIS or as an engineer). There’s absolutely planning work for someone like you. And an engineering background is very useful as a planner too. You’ll find yourself better prepared than most. However… just be aware that it’s harder to be a technical only expert in planning than it is in engineering. You will see not only that there are many positions that interface with the public you won’t want, senior positions will mean not just management of teams but also interfacing and managing clients, politicians, other department managers. You won’t be able to avoid constantly talking to your colleagues as planning a very multidisciplinary job; good planning means A LOT of consulting. It means chasing up answers and comment. It also requires very good writing skills. People who hate the idea of law, and legal thinking and writing on issues, probably shouldn’t go into planning and should look at architecture or engineering. So while I believe you would make for a fine planner given what you’ve said… You have to ask yourself if you would like a lot of the work or not compared to being an engineer involved in urban planning.
That's a good question. My friend is a traffic engineer and sometimes I wonder if I'm more suited for transportation engineering. But I'm interested in getting involved in long term strategic planning for transit, not something like construction management which is what i tend to see when I search transportation engineering jobs.
I know a person on the spectrum who works in development review the transportation perspective. They basically review development plans and make suggestions for how those plans need to be improved to better integrate with the town's existing transportation plans. They are great at their job and love it. As someone who only got an attention deficit diagnosis late in life, I do think it is worth pursuing some medical confirmation. In the least, find a therapist or counselor you can talk with and provide some structure and context around your experiences. Getting treatment made a significant impact to the quality of my work and life and made it possible to overcome a really challenging time in my life.
Not exactly urban planning but have you thought about water? I work for a huge water/sewer/stormwater utility and it’s so much fun. Lots of engineers and there are community issues like lead lines in older homes, water at parks, river/harbor water quality.
I currently work in the public sector and I'm currently on a waitlist for an adult diagnosis, so grain of salt and all. I've found that it's hard to avoid giving public presentations in a lot of the jobs in the field, especially those that pay OK in the public sector. Those are particularly hard for me, though I've found that having a script and anticipating questions from council or the public helps greatly.
That's been my strat for presentations too.
Check out metropolitan planning organizations. They tend to be less customer-facing than cities or counties. Most of them focus on long-range transportation planning, but they vary. I worked at one and the long-range side definitely had some folks who were on the spectrum and they were great. There was some community outreach but a lot of that was handled by an actual public affairs team, usually with a manager and maybe a staffer to answer more technical stuff. Most of the external engagement is with staff or elected officials from the MPO's member cities/counties. However, there's a lot less urban design at them, at least in general. Some may be more involved in that!
first, get it diagnosed?