Long Range Planning Intern

The City of Bellevue, Washington is a tech-centric, vibrant, and diverse metropolitan city within the Puget Sound Region. The city’s planning team is looking for creative graduate students to apply and develop their skills in long range planning and urban design to fill our Long Range Planning Intern position. This position requires the candidate to have a curious mind, an open, mature, and an inclusive view of prevailing social issues and a foundation in long range planning and technical skills. The ideal candidate will have skills in community outreach, writing for public policy, and GIS mapping or other visualization skills. Experience in urban design is also desired. 

In this role, the intern will primarily work on the update to the Neighborhood Area Plans (Lake Hills and West Lake Sammamish), assisting the Neighborhood Area Planning team with:

• Outreach, public meetings and communicating with community members;
• Processing and analyzing data from engagement events;
• Preparing drafts of memos, presentations or other written or visual materials;
• Revising and developing new policies for the update to the plan;
• Revising the narrative portions of the plans;
• Analyzing and describing community conditions in an existing conditions report; 
• Draft and editing reports or other planning documents;
• Creating maps, diagrams, illustrations or other visual materials.

In addition, the intern will be part of the larger Community Development Department and expected to do the following things:

• Attend team, division and department meetings consistent with the intern’s schedule;
• Actively participate in meetings including taking notes, presenting and contributing to discussions;
• Provide support for other planning projects and initiatives, as time permits

Interns may have the opportunity to connect with staff across other City departments in an informal mentorship setting to discuss career development, local government, and other topics that support their professional growth. In some cases, internship work products may be structured to align with graduate program requirements and could contribute to professional or academic projects, with support from City staff. 

Bellevue’s ethos and general work environment supports shared and public oriented values, the opportunity to develop new skills, plus a family friendly, inclusive, and diverse workplace. The position offers the intern the chance to be part of the City of Bellevue’s core values of excellent public service, stewardship, commitment to employees, integrity and innovation. 

Technical Skills and Professional Experience

The city is looking for a mix of the following technical skills and experience:

• Understanding of long-range urban planning principles;
• Establish and maintain effective working relationships with co-workers, community groups, and the public;
• Communicate effectively, orally and in writing;
• Communicate effectively with peers, community members and other stakeholders;
• Experience using Arc GIS preferred;
• Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite, especially InDesign, and other graphic software skills is preferred;
• Familiarity with urban design concepts and modeling software is preferred;
• Fluency in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Hindi or other languages is a plus.

Education and Experience Requirements

• Graduate student currently enrolled in a degree-granting graduate program studying Urban Planning, Public Policy, Landscape Architecture, Architecture or related field 
• Interest in long-range planning, urban design and local area planning.
• Prior experience in an urban planning-related position a plus.

Physical Demands

The physical demands and work environment described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

• Work involves walking, talking, hearing, using hands to handle, feel or operate objects, tools, or controls and reach with hands and arms.
• Vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.
• The employee may be required to push, pull, lift, and/or carry objects up to 40 pounds.
• The noise level in the work environment is moderately quiet.

Flexible/Hybrid Working: A hybrid work schedule is available for this position. Remote work for this position is subject to the department's operational needs and class schedule and will be discussed with candidates during the selection process. Full-time remote work is not an available option. Once hired, employees must reside in the State of Washington and within reasonable commuting distance to Bellevue City Hall.