Students

Welcome the Student Ambassador Committee!

We are thrilled to announce a landmark initiative for our emerging professional members, the Student Ambassador Committee. This dynamic group is dedicated to fostering engagement, dialogue, and exploration within our community.

Welcome From The First Director of the Student Ambassador Committee

In my third year at college studying city planning, I came to a realization that I didn't have a faintest idea of what city planning was actually about. Semester by semester, the obscurity of the contents I learned from lectures baffled me about the role I was supposed to assume as a city planner. What vision am I supposed to have as a city planner? Precisely which planning tasks am I going to be performing?  Certainly, there were several moments when I learned about ideal planning practices and transit ridership patterns and sensed the progressive accumulation of professional knowledge in city planning. I appreciated that improvement, but I never got to get rid of the remnant of my doubt towards this profession, simply because nobody around me talked or even cared about what they exactly did.

I felt the need to delve further into this field of study. So I asked to be part of the faculty research projects, read scholarly journals from planning magazines, and volunteered at APA. I later concluded that city planning is an act of hope for an equitable and altruistic society. From my shallow but better understanding of the profession than before, planners "are" the ambassadors of the community. They pay particular attention to marginalized community members to ensure an inclusive decision-making process and a holistic approach to community development. They may speak on behalf of disadvantaged communities. They deliver all the news and updates to stakeholders. They are also brokers that facilitate the communication between the city and local resident groups.

The city planners were always doing their jobs. We just never got to witness their dedication.

This conclusion led to another conclusion that the basis of city planning is not conceptual nor insignificant but rather obscure, making it harder to grasp its practical aspects than other hard-skill-based fields. If you ever had a similar experience to mine, I'm with you. And I'm here to tell you that I'm also here for you, too.

The Committee of Student Ambassadors is a volunteer-based student organization under the APA City Planning and Management division. Composed of both undergraduate/graduate scholars, we provide an interactive platform for both emerging professionals and practicing planners to connect with one another. We may be considered as a social hub where people with various intentions pass through to gather the needed information. Currently, our student ambassadors are developing exciting new programs for city planning major students as well as emerging professionals to expose them to what city planning actually looks like.

In fact, one of the ideas had been actualized already, and it's something as easy as writing a product review. We occasionally rate stuff. Restaurants, that random stuff you didn't need from Amazon, and so on. Well, have you ever thought of rating your cities?

Our committee believes that city planning starts with viewing the surrounding built environment through a prism of walkability. In this new blog "Rate Your Cities" directly hosted by the Committee, you get to write about "your" cities. Be it downtown that never fails to keep you entertained or the suburban town you grew up in, you get to assess how friendly those places are towards you when you visit them as a pedestrian.

If you wish to learn more about taking your first steps to understand better about what city planning is like, I would highly recommend you to sift through our webpage! Follow the City Planning and Management team on LinkedIn and sign up for our monthly newsletters. The blog is just a quick taste of what we do - so many more to come! So buckle up and be prepared to join our committee's interactive programs tailored to your needs.

Taeyoung (Paul) Kim, Director of the Student Ambassadors Committee