The RTPI briefing on finding work overseas gives general advice and suggests ways of finding information on the planning systems in countries which interest you. You will see from the section on the USA in the general briefing that British-qualified and trained planners find it hard to get work there. We know of only a handful of planners who have achieved this, and they were either US nationals who trained here or British citizens who had strong family connections in the US already. In fact, we know of two who had strong family connections and still have not been able to get work.

There are bureaucratic obstacles, partly because of the attitude of some non-planner officials who have to approve employment applications. In addition, the US planning world seems not to value the skills taught here, though this may change as the US ponders “smart growth”, which (while not very precisely defined yet) is akin to sustainable development, about which British planners know a great deal. However, at present it would be unusual for a local authority to argue that a British planner had skills which no native could offer.

US employers lack familiarity with the way planners are educated elsewhere. In the UK, any prospective employer would know what knowledge and (crucially) experience a chartered town planner would have gained along the way. When the Institute enquired of a local authority in San Francisco "Would a planner with (say) 3 years of undergraduate planning or related education followed by post-graduate specialist planning training and a minimum of two years planning experience find it easy to apply for jobs such as the two you circulated?" the reply was “I believe such a person would be qualified (in fact our former planning director did not even have these qualifications!). It would probably be helpful - and make the applicant more attractive - if they had taken some of their education in the US or Canada or had practiced in the US or Canada for a few years at least.” So despite the encouragement at the start of his reply, in the end it was clear that it is North American experience which counts, not education or training. US planning is based on a very different legal and administrative system, and it is hard to break into this without re-qualifying. This contrasts sharply with the situation in Australia and New Zealand, for example.

Better news

This is not encouraging, but we think it is important to give realistic advice based on experience over several years. That said, and as a counter to pessimism, we learn that the situation may be improving, at least in some places. In June 2006, we heard from a chartered town planner now working in Florida that “We are experiencing tremendous growth here and everybody is looking for staff. I have a young planner working with me, but have been advertising now for 2 months for a senior planner. My ex boss is also looking for 2 staff, the County is looking for staff and so is just are many other places in Florida! I don’t know about other States. If you have a planning degree and some experience you can get an H1B visa which is valid for 3 years. For that you only really have to show that you are paying the going rate for the job. To progress to the green card (which I am currently doing) does require you to show that you have advertised the job, but with not many people applying, that’s not too hard to do. It takes a long time to get the green card, but you get issued with temporary papers which you have to renew each year. With the amount of time and money that I have spent on advertising, I could have used that to pay for the visa! I don’t know if many English planners apply for jobs that are advertised on APA and chapter [branch] web-sites.”

Exchanges

For the reasons set out above, there are no exchanges as conventionally understood between professional planners. The one-year, "total lifestyle" exchange of job/home/car etc is limited to exchanges with Australia and New Zealand. (Though even these have become harder lately, for reasons connected with differences in salaries and costs of living.)

The RTPI set up the joint scheme with the APA mentioned in the general briefing precisely because it is hard for a British planner to find work there, or even that a US and a British planner could do each other's work for a year. We will gladly send further details on the RTPI-APA work-shadowing exchange programme if this is of interest. The scheme ran into difficulties in 2004-5 because the “matching” process is quite time-consuming and won’t work at all without roughly equal numbers of applicants, and there has been a shortage of UK applicants. We are keen to make sure that this does not happen again.

Making contacts

All that said, if you are willing to commit a considerable amount of time, money and effort into the project, you could build up the contacts. For example, the annual conference of the American Planning Association is the single most important event in the US planning calendar - a very important meeting place and crucially, too, a job market. You could perhaps arrange a holiday-cum-contact-building trip around the APA meeting (the next one is in Minneapolis in April 2009) to get an idea of what US employers look for and expect.

The Florida planner mentioned above comments “Your advice to go to planning conferences is good, but I would suggest going to the state ones. For example, the Florida chapter of the APA (FAPA) has a conference in September and there are usually people looking for staff. It’s also a good opportunity to learn about local issues. The way they do things here are different than the UK, but it’s not hard to learn and in Florida we are definitely getting more new urbanism/smart growth orientated. Otherwise, the issues are fairly similar and the people are too – still have the neighbours that don’t like anything in their back yard!”   You can find out more about APA Chapter conferences here.

Updated May 2008

Author:

Judith Eversley

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

12-Sep-07

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