The Appeal of a Career in Urban Policy
In this week’s class, we had the pleasure of talking to multiple alumni of the Munk School, all of whom are in the midst of exciting careers in urban policy. They told us about their work, the challenges they faced, the implications of COVID-19 on their work, and what they liked about their respective jobs. It was the comments regarding this last topic that I found particularly interesting.
Multiple alumni said that they find their work satisfying or otherwise appealing in nature because there is less distance between them and the people that they are serving than there would be if they were working at, say, the federal or provincial level. As these alumni see it, they are at the forefront of delivering services that nearly everybody relies on or interacts with to some degree, which makes their work feel more impactful.
This sentiment should not be surprising. After all, the week’s readings and lecture painted a clear picture: Cities are responsible for providing a staggering breadth of services. According to Harry Kitchen and Enid Slack, these services include policing, water distribution, fire services, waste management, libraries, community centres, parks, streetlights, transit, road maintenance, and many, many more. Given the nature of these services, it only seems natural that policymakers at the municipal level will feel more directly connected with the public they serve.
Nonetheless, I was, at the time, struck by this answer of some of the alumni. It’s a way of looking at urban policy I had never really considered before, and it only serves to further pique my interest in this field.
