Course Library
Browse our library of planning courses
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.
Measuring Neighborhood Segregation and Diversity
This course reviews the various ways to measure both segregation and diversity at the neighborhood scale.
Introduction to City Planning 3: Midcentury Modern (1940-1979)
This course explores the central role of planning in envisioning cities in the middle 20th century. World War II and the Cold War re-ordered power and politics in new ways. The tragic destruction and loss of World War II gave transformed into exciting opportunities for planners to try new things, in new ways.
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.
Transportation Planning: The Role of Transportation Systems in Social and Economic Life
By the end of this course, you will have a strong understanding of the way in which transportation systems interact with society and the economy.
Virtual Reality for Planners 2: Modeling in SketchUp
Learn how to use SketchUp to create content appropriate for a virtual reality environment. By the end of the course, viewers will be ready to learn how to prepare a final model for export into Unity.
Virtual Reality for Planners 1: Introduction
This course provides an overview of virtual reality (VR) and the elements that lead to effective urban design simulations and, ultimately, how to produce VR applications that enable users to explore urban design scenarios.
United States Census 2020: All About Census 2020
Learn all about the upcoming Census. This course provides an overview of planned operations and discusses the Census schedule, process, products, accuracy, publicity, and jobs.
United States Census 2020: Using FactFinder and the American Community Survey
Learn how to use Census.gov and American FactFinder websites, which are the principal portals to Census Bureau data products and maps.
United States Census 2020: Introduction
This course covers basic Census Bureau geography and Census-taking concepts. It reviews the Census Bureau’s mission and development of the nation’s statistical and geographic "architecture" that is the basis of almost all general purpose used in government, academia, and the business world.
The Ethics of Disruptive Transportation Technologies
This course discusses the process for making ethical decisions as part of planning for disruptive technologies.
Tableau for Planners: Introduction
This course will introduce general principles of data visualization and orient the user with the Tableau platform. Learn how to connect to a data set in Microsoft Excel, understand general principles of a relational database, and start building basic worksheets and dashboards.
21st Century Storytelling: Video for Planners
This course will give you motivation to create video content, and give you practical, affordable tips to be heard among the online noise.
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.
Conceptual Drawing for Planners
In this course, we will learn effective ways of drawing as a means to communicate design ideas and explore digital tools that support traditional drawing.
Regulatory Implications of Tiny Homes
In this course we will define a tiny home and explore the history and appeal of this seemingly recent movement. The course touches on challenges associated with the legal development and regulation of this alternative residential option.
Mobile Drawing Apps for Planners
This course explores three affordable mobile drawing apps and how each might facilitate the planner’s creative process.
Understanding the Great Recession
This course explores the causes of the Great Recession, the recession's impact on local policy discussions, and how planners should think about economic impacts when thinking about long-term plans.
Writing Master Plans, From Start to Finish
In this course you’ll learn how to approach a master plan—starting with concept development and community voice, and finishing with the mechanics of organizing and expressing ideas.