Steven Vance

MUPP 2010

CEO and Founder of Chicago Cityscape
Deputy Editor and Co-Founder of Streetsblog Chicago

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Can you describe your work and how your planning degree contributes to it?

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Studying at CUPPA helps you develop a lot of connections to local professionals, and those connections have persisted and I rely on those people to fill in the expertise that I don't have about transportation and land use planning. Transportation is the focus of Streetsblog Chicago and land use is the focus of my small business, Chicago Cityscape.

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What do you like most about your current job or related work in planning?

 

I like that planning is a lot of different things and that studying at UIC, and the internship requirement, prepared me to be able to handle a lot of different kinds of work.

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What advice do you wish you had gotten as a MUPP or, conversely, what advice would you give to young planners today?

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Take classes in all of the concentrations. I regret not having any classes in housing or real estate, which I had to learn externally many years later for the small business I created.