Designing the Megaregion

Current megaregion development is destabilizing the natural environment, causing gridlock on highways and congestion at airports, and making cities and suburbs separate and unequal. This course discusses how we can change these trends and invest in megaregions to improve planning and development outcomes developing and older areas.

Lewis Mumford on the City 1: The City - Heaven and Hell

This short documentary film is the first part of a larger series hosted by Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and literary critic, who wrote the book The City in History on which this film is based. The film originally aired in 1963. This first film in the series uses historic footage from all over the world for a kind of meditative effect, punctuated with Mumford's philosophical observations on the past, present, and future of cities.

Warning: Some graphic images appear in the last third of this film.

Classical Location Theory

This course traces the key theories and conceptual models that have been developed to explain why economic activities tend to locate where they do.

Urban Agriculture

Urban farming is becoming more popular around the state of California, taking many forms along the way, as documented in this film produced by experts from the University of California and the Cal State University system in cooperation with local organizations.

Hand Drawing Master Plans

This course provides an introduction to urban design sketching by teaching how to draw urban design sketches and master plans using a mix of colored and black ink. These drawing techniques can be used to create plans that are detailed and expressive enough to use both in academic and professional presentations.

Urbanized

The documentary film "Urbanized" debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011 and succeeds in popularizing a conversation about urbanism, urban planning, and cities in a way that few cultural artifacts have managed before or since.

The Future of Cities After COVID-19

This virtual panel discussion focuses on the potential for the COVID-19 pandemic to influence the development, demographic, and environmental trends of the future. Speakers: Allison Arieff, William Fulton, Scott Frazier, and Mariela Alfonzo. Moderator: James Brasuell.

The Human Scale

The Human Scale juxtaposes the urban experiences of cities across the World to raise questions about the costs of modernity and to argue in favor of city planning that reclaims the public realm for social life. This new approach to planning is measured by walking distances, social interactions, and social inclusion, rather than vehicle speeds and parking spaces.

Introduction to Smart Cities

This course explores the characteristics and the challenges of smart cities, as well as the potential opportunities for smart cities within the design and planning fields. This course also discusses the drivers and the essential technologies in a smart city.

Transportation Planning: Making Transportation Plans—Rationality and Politics

This course explains the major forms of planning applicable to transportation, including rational comprehensive planning, strategic planning, policy analysis, incremental planning, advocacy planning, and communicative planning.

Defining Neighborhoods

This course reviews the varying definitions of neighborhoods and examines methods for defining a physical basis and tangible meaning to neighborhoods based on the location of neighborhood centers, boundaries, and spatial extents.

Transportation Planning: Strategies for Working with Roadway Capacity

This course explains the menu of contemporary approaches to modifying or adding to transportation capacity. It provides examples of capacity responses to regional mobility for commuters and local accessibility for communities.

Transportation Planning: Travel Behavior Regulations, Pricing, and Programs

This course reviews the efficacy of regulatory strategies (such as prohibitions and mandates), pricing strategies (such as peak period pricing), and education and information strategies (such as real-time ride-hailing apps).

Transportation Planning: Travel Behavior Principles and Modelling Approaches

This course provides an overview and critique of the four-step model used in transportation planning. By the end of this course, viewers will be able to conceptualize how transportation models can address contemporary problems in transportation planning, such as transit-oriented development.

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.

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.

Introduction to New Mobility

The course on "New Mobility" covers the gamut of technological advancements where planning, transportation, and infrastructure design intersect.

Transit Planning: The First/Last Mile

This course covers the range of elements needed to boost access to transit, with a focus on door-to-door transportation from a destination to a transit station.

Beyond Complete Streets for Walking and Biking

This course covers current practices in planning and implementation of infrastructure for biking and walking.