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.
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: 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.
Virtual Reality for Planners 4: Refining the End User Experience
This final course of the virtual reality series discusses the big picture, looks at space planning and event setup, discusses alternatives to the full VR experience, and lists a few ways to fine tune the user’s experience for maximum success.
Virtual Reality for Planners 3: Working with Unity
In this third course of the virtual reality series, we will create a VR application from scratch using Unity. We will be adding SketchUp data, VR components, materials, textures, backgrounds, sky and finally virtual reality.
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.
Introduction to Planning: Zoning as an Implementation Tool
This course discusses the Zoning Ordinance - its structure, its relationship to the plan and the sometimes confusing procedures through which it is modified and varied.
Introduction to Planning: Implementation of the Plan
This course provides an overview of implementation strategies for a Comprehensive Plan and examines how those strategies fit together.
Introduction to New Mobility
The course on "New Mobility" covers the gamut of technological advancements where planning, transportation, and infrastructure design intersect.
Beyond Complete Streets for Walking and Biking
This course covers current practices in planning and implementation of infrastructure for biking and walking.
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.
Missing Middle Housing: Meeting the Growing Demand for Walkable Urbanism
Learn about Missing Middle Housing and how to integrate these types into existing neighborhoods.