Course Library
Browse our library of planning courses
Measuring Neighborhood Segregation and Diversity
This course reviews the various ways to measure both segregation and diversity at the neighborhood scale.
Transportation Planning: Effects on the Environment, Health, and Social Justice
This course discusses the local and global impacts of transportation systems and the mitigation of those impacts. The course also identifies prospects for change, as achieved by technology, transportation management, and pricing.
The Ethics of Disruptive Transportation Technologies
This course discusses the process for making ethical decisions as part of planning for disruptive technologies.
Regulating Electronic Message Centers
This course provides practical, solution-focused guidance for regulations that leverage digital sign technology while protecting community aesthetic values and safety concerns. This course is available for free.
Comprehensive Planning for Healthy Communities
This course covers the process of incorporating public health goals into a General Plan or Comprehensive Plan for a region, county, city, town, or neighborhood.
Introduction to Healthy Communities
This course provides an overview of the healthy community movement and the relationship between health and planning.
Form-Based Codes 101: Legal Aspects
This course explores the legal issues of creating and using a form-based code.
Defensible Sign Regulations
Communities regulate the characteristics of signs to achieve multiple goals, such as limiting driver distraction, maintaining the aesthetic character of the community, and implementing aspects of related plans. This course will show participants how to draft—and adopt—sign ordinances that accomplish those purposes while conforming with the First Amendment.
Regulating Sex Businesses, Part 2: Practical Tips
This course will provide practical tips for developing local zoning and licensing regulations for sexually oriented businesses. This course builds on material from Part 1 of this two-part series.
Regulating Sex Businesses, Part 1: Principles and Foundations
This course shows how to lay the foundation for ordinances that mitigate the negative effects of sex businesses while conforming with constitutional requirements under the First Amendment.
The Ethics of Office Administration, Part 2
The second course in the "Ethics of Office Administration" series discusses how to identify, evaluate, and resolve difficult scenarios that might arise in a planning office.
The Ethics of Office Administration, Part 1
The administration of a planning office—whether in the private or public sector—can raise ethical questions. This course introduces these questions and presents tools for analyzing them.
Planning and the Law: Procedural Due Process
The United States Constitution protects rights to "due process." In a land use law context, due process is why local governments must treat legislative and quasi-judicial decision making differently. At the end of this course, students will be able to differentiate between legislative and quasi-judicial decisions and to understand the due process implications of the distinction.
Planning and the Law: The Takings Clause
This course will help students understand and explore three legal concepts borne of the United States Constitution's Takings Clause: eminent domain, regulatory takings, and exactions. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify whether a particular government action is at risk of violating the Takings Clause.
Healthy Urban Food Systems: Planning Production Facilities
This course examines the role for planning in addressing various forms of urban agriculture as well as many examples from around the country of the statutes, policy, and practices implementing interventions in food production at urban scales.
Healthy Urban Food Systems: Planning Retail Facilities
This course introduces information from legal and public health perspectives on the retail side of food systems entities, such as farmers markets, grocery stores, and mobile vending.
Planning Ethics
This course provides professional planners with a thorough and thoughtful discussion of ethical concerns likely to face many plannersin their careers. The work of planning for communities is rooted in values, often unexpressed, about the role of government in working for a better future. So planners should, from time to time, examine their own values and those of the American Institute of Certified Planners as they go about their work in the public or private sectors.
SketchUp for Planners - An Introduction
Get started using SketchUp, the popular, easy-to-learn 3D digital modeling program. This course provides an introduction to how planners and architects represent three-dimensional objects in two-dimensions, with step-by-step instructions for creating and using simple 3D models.
SketchUp for Planners - Intermediate Part 3
Combining SketchUp and Adobe Creative Suite, this course demonstrates how to use SketchUp together with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to create illustrative and informative photo simulations, perspective views, sections and site plans.
InDesign for Planners - Advanced
Adobe InDesign is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier document layout software, with a number of valuable applications for urban planning. This course builds upon the Introduction and Intermediate InDesign courses, giving you step-by-step instructions on my advanced features of InDesign CS6, all built around designing and composing a longer report/plan.