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.
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.
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.
Mobile Drawing Apps for Planners
This course explores three affordable mobile drawing apps and how each might facilitate the planner’s creative process.
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.
Managing a Planning Organization
At the end of this course, you will understand how to motivate and inspire staff; what steps to take to deal with unmotivated personnel; and how to manage an office as part of a larger organization.
Introduction to Healthy Communities
This course provides an overview of the healthy community movement and the relationship between health and planning.
Writing for Planners: Documents that Work
This course reviews the different types of documents planners are called on to write—from one-page memos to complex master plans—and apply a simple writing approach that ensures the document's points are complete, compelling, and accurate.
Photoshop CC for Planners 1: Basic Functions
Adobe Photoshop CC is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier image editing software, with a number of useful applications for urban planning. This course gives you a step-by-step introduction to the basic tools of Photoshop CC.
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.
Drawing in the Landscape: Painting Color
This is the third course in the Drawing series. In this course we inquire into the nature of observing and representing color works in transitive environments, building upon the initial sketch, and beginning watercolor technique.
AutoCAD 101
This course provides an introduction to AutoCAD’s essential functions for first-time users and demonstrates how to create site plans, street sections, and other two-dimensional scaled diagrams.
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.
Drawing in the Landscape: The Adventure Begins
This is the first course in the Drawing series. In this course, you will learn techniques for drawing, sketching and rendering in the field. You will learn how to draw lines and contours, understand perspective, and render tone and value with light and shadow.