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.
The Ethics of Disruptive Transportation Technologies
This course discusses the process for making ethical decisions as part of planning for disruptive technologies.
Storytelling for Planners
This course will teach planners how to adapt proven storytelling methods employed by creative artists for centuries. We will cover the storytelling applications to analog and digital outreach methods.
Leadership in Planning: Strategic Decision-Making in the Public Interest
At the end of this course, you will understand how to turn planning theory into practice in the real world.
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.
MetroQuest Public Involvement Software: In Practice and In Action
This course provides an introduction to working with MetroQuest, what it helps planners achieve, and some of its most important features and capabilities. The course also presents a series of case studies to demonstrate the results MetroQuest has achieved for a wide range of planning projects.
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.
Code Drafting and the Law
In our complex legal society, understanding the basis of planning law and governing legislation is a must. The course begins with the building blocks of understanding codes, and goes on to explore how statutory authority and constitutional issues impact your everyday decisions. It concludes with a discussion of contemporary legal, quasi-legal and administrative practices.
Ethics: Balancing a Business Friendly Planning Environment, Part 2
Over the past several years, the private sector, led by developers, has increasingly courted, conflicted and collaborated with planning departments amid shrinking budgets. As business interests engage and influence public agencies and planning strategy, the role of ethics is of increasing importance for the practicing planner. This is the second of a two-part series that evaluates and analyses the role of planners, from public window staff to department heads, in an increasingly business-friendly environment.
Legal Issues for Form-Based Codes
Form-based codes (FBCs) have made a big splash in re-zoning, general plan updates and among land use professionals and stakeholders. Learn what form-based codes are from a legal definition, and the authority for form-based codes. Instructor Mark White evaluates the nuances of due process issues, takings, suburban uses of FBCs and exclusionary zoning.