<p>I’m thinking about studying Urban Planning in college but also considering Civil Engineering and Architecture as fields of study as well.</p>
<p>I was curious about what Civil Engineers think of Urban Planners and Architects - I hear there’s a friendly rivalry between them. I’ve heard that Civil Engineers think of Architects as artistic divas who don’t really understand the technical aspect of construction - is this true? I’ve also heard that Architects consider Civil/Structural Engineers to be number crunchers who lack imagination. What do civil engineers think of urban planners and what is the stereotypical image of planners? </p>
<p>These aren’t necessarily important things to know but I am curious.</p>
<p>That’s basically true. I got into trouble with a landscape architect the other day by recommending that they just paint an electrical transformer green and not go through a bunch of rigamarole to hide it behind structure. He fumed silently at me for the rest of the meeting, but we’re all good now. :)</p>
<p>It’s typically a friendly rivalry, for any engineers who work with architects, and vice versa. It mainly stems from the fact that we each have different priorities in the workplace: engineers are paid to be advocates for the functional, for the most efficient design. Architects are paid to be advocates for the aesthetic. Naturally, when the worlds collide and we have to work with each other every day, there are going to be some conflicts between our respective values.</p>
<p>I’ve got good relationships with architects, and I’ve got bad relationships with architects. Some architects really work with me to get a solution for things. The bad relationships arise when an architect is completely pigheaded about making something aesthetic, to the point that they insist upon a design that’s either non-functional or flat-out unsafe. Conversely, I know of engineers who must be an absolute nightmare for architects because they’re being pigheaded about saying that something’s “impossible” to design just because they’re unwilling to compromise in the interest of keeping something from being butt-ugly.</p>
<p>Honestly, we don’t run into a lot of urban planners… usually those come before we get our hands dirty. I know some urban planners, though, and generally think they’re pretty cool.</p>
<p>Urban planners typically work in the more conceptual stages and don’t usually get into the nitty gritty details. I worked in a firm where we had transportation engineers and urban planners and there weren’t really any “rivalries,” but that’s probably because our goals didn’t really conflict with each others in the types of projects we did or we worked on separate projects (we’re both involved in planning when we work together, basically).</p>
<p>They probably have to have a good grasp of local politics to get their projects approved by the local government and to fight NIMBYism. My colleagues typically had to make presentations to the community as part of the process. Urban planners need to be visual and understand space and how people would use it. </p>
<p>I actually also considered architecture and urban planning, but went with just civil engineering. The three fields are pretty different, but I was drawn to all of them because I wanted to put buildings up</p>