Why Didn’t Planners Become Extinct with the Dinosaurs?

Aric Jensen

Davis County Planner

Why did we, as generation X'ers, bother to become planners?  I mean, why aren't we hanging out with our fellow generation X'ers, drinking lattes at the edge of our Olympic-sized pool, watching our Dot.com stock prices sail through the roof?  Is there some defective gene that gives us urgings to work on a daily basis with angry citizens, vacillating politicians, and a bureaucratic system that would make any third-world country proud?  And maybe more importantly, is there a cure?

One of my recurring nightmares is that I get up and go to work in the morning and discover that my office is carpeted with orange glue-down carpet and that I share it with the Utah State University Agricultural Extension.  Oh wait, that's reality.  I guess the nightmares must be better.

When I told my dad that I was considering studying Urban Planning at the University of Utah, he thought I'd lost it.  You need to understand that my Dad is an Attorney/Real Estate Broker in Los Angeles, and that becoming a Planner would be like turning to the Dark Side of the Force.  Furthermore, it's a well known fact that all planners are government employees, and that all government employees are liberal Democrats, (a sub-caste below the untouchables).  My becoming one would cause that I should be ostracized from the family, a horrible fate for an eldest son, and a blight on the family name.

In the end, we struck a compromise.  I graduated in Real Estate Development (a self-composed compilation of Finance, Planning, Management, Civil Engineering, and Architecture classes, administered through the office of University Studies) with an emphasis in Planning and in Spanish.   Why Spanish?  I guess because I've always wanted to live full time in a third world country, not just between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm.  (Wilf -- that doesn't include our office, just everywhere else.)

Getting back to the original question, why has our generation continued the planning tradition?  And what mark will we leave on it for the Generation Y'ers (or Y'ners!) that follow us?  The answer is -- I don't know.  But there must be something that motivates us to do what we do.  Speaking of which, what exactly do we do?  Have you ever had someone ask you what a Planner is?  The first time someone asked me that question I was left with the impression that I was nothing more than a physical manifestation of pork barrel spending.  But I got over that after 8 months of therapy.

I guess what I'm driving at is that the work we do is important and worthwhile, and that as planners we should be proud of the positive contribution that we make to society.  Even if we have to come over to the Dark Side.