While it may not be obvi­ous to those out­side the field, urban plan­ning is actu­al­ly very inter­est­ing, espe­cial­ly when one begins to under­stand how it impacts our dai­ly lives and the places where we live, work, and play. To show how rel­e­vant and impor­tant plan­ning is, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (USC) grad­u­ate stu­dents, Saman­tha Ell­man and Natal­ie Ikhra­ta, cre­at­ed the pod­cast “Urban Plan­ning is Not Bor­ing” about a year ago.

The pod­cast con­nects urban plan­ning to time­ly news events and social issues and has now reached 37 episodes, with Ell­man and Ikhra­ta dis­cussing top­ics rang­ing from afford­able hous­ing to nat­ur­al haz­ards. The show has fea­tured a wide vari­ety of guests, includ­ing both prac­ti­tion­ers and aca­d­e­mics, giv­ing lis­ten­ers free, valu­able insights into urban plan­ning and its many sub-fields such as urban design, dis­as­ter plan­ning, trans­porta­tion plan­ning, and afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ment.

Ell­man and Ikhra­ta, who both grad­u­at­ed from USC in May with mas­ter’s degrees in urban plan­ning, were inspired to start the pod­cast when they rec­og­nized that resources to explore urban plan­ning out­side the class­room were lack­ing. Not only were there very few plan­ning-focused pod­casts, those that were avail­able  were not very engag­ing, espe­cial­ly for stu­dents and young pro­fes­sion­als. 

To learn more about the pod­cast and its cre­ators, please read the source arti­cle by Edhi­ta Sing­hal.