What is urban and regional planning?
Planners deal with the fact that human communities are always changing. The consequences of this change can be chaotic and destructive, or life enhancing. A planner's task is to help communities cope with this steady growth, change, and renewal in ways that will maintain and improve the community's quality of life. Planners recognize the complexity of communities. As with natural environments, human communities are strengthened by diversity. One task is to help communities become even more diverse, broadening the variety of employment, educational, cultural, entertainment, shopping, and housing opportunities and promoting a broad range of land uses, income levels, and types of people. Another task is to help communities deal with the clashes of interest produced by such variety and turn these differences into a positive force for constructive change. Urban and regional planning involves multiple disciplines and addresses cities and people, human services and infrastructure, f
