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Professionals · code 2164

Town and traffic planners

AI can model the traffic. Getting the community to agree to the plan is still planning.

Planning traffic routes and public transport is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Analysing the community, planning land use and consulting the council are mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Town and traffic planners develop and implement plans and policies for the controlled use of urban and rural land and for traffic systems. They conduct research and provide advice on economic, environmental and social factors affecting land use and traffic flows. Tasks include - (a) planning layout and coordinating development of urban areas; (b) compiling and analysing data on economic, legal, political, cultural, demographic, sociological, physical and environmental factors affecting land use; (c) conferring with government authorities, communities and specialists in fields such as architecture, planning, social science, the environment and the law; (d) devising and recommending use and development of land, and presenting narrative and graphic plans, programmes and designs to groups and individuals; (e) advising governments, companies and communities on urban and regional planning issues and proposals; (f) reviewing and evaluating environmental impact reports; (g) planning and coordinating the development of land areas for parks, schools, institutions, airports, roadways and related projects, and for commercial, industrial and residential sites; (h) planning and advising on routing and control of road traffic and public transportation systems for efficiency and safety. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Land planner - Traffic planner - Urban planner Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Building architect - 2161 - Landscape architect - 2162

  • urban planner
  • transport planner
  • land planner

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

59 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure

331 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 40.8 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 40.8 = 59.2.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 9 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Town and traffic planners 59

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Traffic and transport modelling.
  • Data analysis.
  • Reviewing reports.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Consulting communities.
  • Balancing competing interests.
  • Presenting plans to decision-makers.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Digital twins of cities.
  • Active travel and low-traffic schemes.
  • Climate adaptation.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

45 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

9 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 9 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

9 How
hands-on
9 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, matched to one US job .

finger skill 25 · hand skill 0 · cramped spaces 2 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 51, against an average of 41. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 51

    Planning and advising on routing and control of road traffic and public transportation systems for efficiency and safety.

    Medium
  2. 44

    Compiling and analysing data on economic, legal, political, cultural, demographic, sociological, physical and environmental factors affecting land use

    Low
  3. 42

    Reviewing and evaluating environmental impact reports

    Low
  4. 42

    Advising governments, companies and communities on urban and regional planning issues and proposals

    Low
  5. 42

    Devising and recommending use and development of land, and presenting narrative and graphic plans, programmes and designs to groups and individuals

    Low
  6. 39

    Planning layout and coordinating development of urban areas

    Low
  7. 34

    Planning and coordinating the development of land areas for parks, schools, institutions, airports, roadways and related projects, and for commercial, industrial and residential sites

    Low
  8. 33

    Conferring with government authorities, communities and specialists in fields such as architecture, planning, social science the environment and the law

    Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
71
AI does it for you
45

Sidekick wins, by 26 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2326

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.01% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

53
47

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should town and transport planners be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of the job are changing. Traffic and transport planning is rated Medium; data analysis, impact reports, advice, land use, urban layout and consultation are Low. AI modelling speeds up analysis; politics and public consultation stay human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →