PLAN 1010

Not as easy of an A as I was thought it would be. Attendance in lectures isn't necessary but I still attended almost all of the lectures and studied hard and still ended with an A-. Unlike pervious years where students where allowed to take the exams anywhere they wanted we had to take the exams in the lecture hall. Beatley is very passionate and knowledgeable but his lecture are very boring and hard to pay attention to. If you don't have to take this class I would not.

I cannot recommend this class enough. It can be whatever you want or need out of class. Attendance is optional, if you want an easy class with minimal time needed to study for the midterm and final. The final paper is 10-15 pages but is not difficult and you tend to learn something interesting about the urban planning in your county. If you do go to class Professor Beatley is an amazing person and loves urban planning. He tends to get excited about one project or another and spend all of class with it, which can be great to learn about to or provide a calming place to do homework. If you do not go to class you still learn about interesting projects on that one day you actually study for the midterm or final that give you something to talk about during environmental conversations at Thanksgiving.

This has to be the easiest class at this university. I feel really bad for Professor Beatley, as he is incredibly passionate and knowledgable about planning as a whole, but was unable to use that passion to deliver captivating lectures. The lectures and readings are basically optional. I showed up simply to have a venue to do my homework in. If you need an easy 3 credits, take this course. If you want to learn about planning, take one of Moomaw's or Mondschein's classes instead.

This class is worth taking! I'll start off by saying that it is a very easy A. There are 3 grades for the entire semester. A midterm and final (with identical formats) and a large final paper. After going to the midterm, it was obvious that half the class has never been to a lecture before. And you really don't need to. Prof. Beatley gives you a list of terms to study before the midterm and final, as long as you go through all the ones marked in red (which should take a max of 3 hours), you will get an A on the exam. The TAs and even Prof. Beatley grade very easily. The final paper is long and in it you are tasked at analyzing your home town. If your home town has a lot of information on it's planning history, this will be a very easy paper to write. However, that is not the case for everyone. I wish I didn't put off this paper until finals week because it did take a long time to write, even if it was relatively easy. There are quite a few readings, however I don't know anyone who actually did them.

With that being said, the content of this course is extremely interesting! I would love just finding a comfortable spot in class, working on homework for other classes while listening to Prof. Beatley lecture. It often felt like I was watching a YouTube video. If you need an easy A to fill your schedule, this is it!

Professor Beatley is an amazing guy that is very passionate about what he teaches and is willing to help anyone pass this class (the lectures are very dry although). He does assign VERY long readings, but it is not necessary to read them at all (also, he has all of the readings online either in his syllabus or on Collab, so no need to buy any textbooks!). He hosts movie nights and even a tour of downtown Charlottesville! Not a lot of people go to them, but really consider going, you learn a lot! The exams aren't hard at all, just get the definitions from google and study them about one-two weeks prior to the test. You also have plenty of time to do the final paper, it's very easy and quite interesting. I recommend this class to anyone, no matter what major.

Tim is such a wholesome man and is very passionate about urban planning. Although the lectures are pretty boring, you can zone out for 95% of the lecture and still get the general gist of what is happening. I would usually pay attention to the things I found interesting and then do other work when I didn't. He also provided the key terms that will be on the exam on the final slide of each PowerPoint which you can look up pretty easily. Most people never showed up and still did pretty decent in the class. I never did the readings unless I was interested in a topic, and I still got an A. Also, his class has a pretty easy midterm and final along with a paper that I did the night before. Tim offers a decent amount of easy extra credit like movie night and coming to tour the downtown mall. If you want an easy A and hear a wholesome man talk about the stuff he is passionate about, this is the right class

I personally found a lot of value in this course. The subject of planning is so applicable to every aspect of your community that you’ll find a place for almost everything you learn. Professor Beatley is also super nice and cares a lot about his subject (as he’s also a widely published author). He covers a variety of topics throughout the course that I wanted to attend each and every lecture. I know some people may find his lectures dry, but there is something magical about seeing what you learn come into practice. I made sure to attend each of his lectures, which helped me understand each concept for the exam much more thoroughly. Besides the midterm and final, there’s only one assignment in the course which is an analysis paper. Because it’s a much longer term assignment, he gives you a direction to put together your sources. Even though you don’t need to attend lectures, I believe it can only help you in your research and deepen your appreciation for the field as a whole. Would absolutely recommend!

I'm really interested in urban planning, and this course was incredibly boring. We didn't actually learn any urban planning tools or concepts through meaningful explanations, we just looked at photos of other cities and the professor would ramble about them. This course made me less interested in urban planning and lectures were so boring. Could be a great course if the lectures were more interesting. Would not recommend this class unless you need it for A-school pre-req.

I liked Professor Beatley so much that I ended up working for him. He's one of my favorite professors, and by far the most passionate about his subject of interest. While his lectures get a little dull, and he almost never gets to the end of his slide deck, he makes up for it with fantastic stories and interesting examples.

This class is VERY easy. The essay at the end was a breeze, although some may find it long. So, if you're interested in sustainability and planning and just want to try it out, this is a great way to go.

PLAN 1010 is a class that I looked greatly forward to coming into college as I applied as an Urban Planning major in the A-School. Professor Beatley is incredibly knowledgeable and nice, but his lectures are not technical and dive into the mechanics of urban planning at all. It is truly the definition of a survey intro course. He talks about examples he is passionate about but does not analyze them very deeply.

The course does not dive into the theory or tools of urban planning. Terms such as zoning and transit-oriented designs are thrown around, but they are not elaborated upon. The readings are long and often dry (as they often go surface-level or are not practical while being ideological). The tests are ok as long as you listened in class. The final paper is rather interesting as you examine the urban planning of your own city/town, but there is not much from class to be applied in analyzing your own place (as none were really taught).