Deciding how cities and towns grow: zoning, transportation, neighborhoods, and resilience to disasters.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
City Planning Director: Leads a city's planning department and shapes how the whole city grows. Typical pay $125k.
Chief Resilience Officer: Prepares a city for floods, heat waves, earthquakes, and other shocks. Typical pay $140k.
Principal Urban Designer: Designs whole neighborhoods, downtowns, and campuses: the streets, blocks, and public spaces between buildings. Typical pay $115k.
Chief Heat Officer: Leads a city’s fight against deadly summer heat, from cooling centers and shade trees to cool roofs and heat-wave warnings. Typical pay $130k.
Land Use Hearing Examiner: Acts like a judge for zoning and building fights, holding hearings and deciding whether projects can go forward. Typical pay $135k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Urban & Regional Planner: Plans how land is used: where housing, parks, roads, and businesses should go. Typical pay $82k.
Transportation Planner: Plans bus routes, rail lines, bike networks, and roads so people can get around. Typical pay $85k.
Airport Planner: Plans the future layout of airports: runways, terminals, parking, and noise zones. Typical pay $95k.
Urban Designer: Designs the shape of streets, blocks, and public spaces in a city. Typical pay $85k.
Environmental Planner: Reviews how projects like highways and housing will affect wildlife, water, and air. Typical pay $76k.
GIS Planning Analyst: Builds maps and data tools that help planners see where a city is growing and who is affected. Typical pay $70k.
Community Development Specialist: Runs programs that bring housing repairs, small-business help, and parks to struggling neighborhoods. Typical pay $60k.
Zoning Administrator: Interprets and enforces the zoning rules that say what can be built where. Typical pay $70k.
Housing Rehabilitation Specialist: Runs a city or nonprofit program that fixes up homes for low-income seniors and families, from writing the repair list to inspecting the finished work. Typical pay $62k.
Starter: fastest way in
Planning Technician: Helps planners by checking applications, updating maps, and answering public questions. Typical pay $50k.
Permit Technician: Processes building permit applications and helps builders get through the approval process. Typical pay $48k.
Code Enforcement Officer: Makes sure properties follow local rules on things like trash, overgrown lots, and unsafe buildings. Typical pay $52k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.