Teaching Planners about Infrastructures A Call to Civil Engineers

Abstract

More than 40% of the more than 20,000 planners in the United States influence the manner in which water, sewer, drainage, streets, and other kinds of physical infrastructure are planned and used. But to what extent are planners educated about infrastructure? Information suggests that only about half of the accredited urban planning programs offer infrastructure engineering and planning in their curricula. Fewer than 10% include infrastructure instruction to their core curriculum. New information provides some insight into the current state of infrastructure education in graduate planning programs. This paper reviews and comments upon the situation, and offers curricular recommendations to graduate planning programs. This paper also challenges civil engineers to become involved in the education of professional planners in specific ways since it is engineers, and not planners, who will be blamed for infrastructure that is badly arranged by the planning process.