Course Library
Browse our library of planning courses
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
Urban planners and urban designers are interested in building places that embody beauty and hope. In this course, Emily Talen, PhD, FAICP, presents free urban design software tools that can help urban planners and urban designers visualize changes in the built environment to support the overarching goal of creating better places.
Visual Simulation: Advanced Rendering in SketchUp
In this course, you'll learn to create an advanced rendering of a SketchUp site model, using a free third-party renderer called Kerkythea to design realistic lighting and shading. Then add components to your rendering in Adobe Photoshop.
Video for Planners
Video can be a highly effective tool for communicating urban planning issues as well as increasing public knowledge and community engagement. This video course will walk you through the three steps of creating a video: capturing the footage, creating the video with editing software, and distributing video across the web. We’ll look at examples of urban planning departments that have used video well, and review different content types that you can use as a model.
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.