Course Library
Browse our library of planning courses
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 2: The City - Cars or People?
This short documentary film is the second part of a larger series hosted by Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and literary critic whose studies in the 20th century included attention to cities and architecture that persists in influence into the present day.
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.
City Dreamers
The film "City Dreamers," directed by Joseph Hillel and released in 2018, tells the story of four women designers who worked to shape North American cities throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century.
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.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
The 2011 documentary film “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” documents the rapid rise and fall of a housing complex in St. Louis. Pruitt-Igoe became a symbol for the failure of public housing policy in the late 20th century.
Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City
The life and achievements of architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham offer a chance to witness the application of the social agenda of the City Beautiful movement, of which Burnham was one of the most famous practitioners.
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.
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
What makes good public spaces work, and why are some public spaces underused? Over the course of this film, William Whyte details insights into seven basic factors of successful public spaces: suitable space, interaction with the street, the sun, food, water, trees, and, finally, a term Whyte calls triangulation, or the ability of a public space to bring people together.
Introduction to City Planning 5: The City of Tomorrow
Learn why city planning is crucial to the urban future and why the success of future cities will depend on the extent to which they are sustainable, equitable, and how they use technology to serve citizens. Evaluate the key challenges facing cities in the future and, importantly, potential solutions for those challenges.
Introduction to City Planning 4: Planning in the Postmodern Age (1980-Today)
Survey the key economic, environmental, sociopolitical, and technological shifts responsible for the evolution of city planning from 1980 to contemporary times. Assess historical urban planning movements through a critical lens, as course instructor Jason Luger discusses the relevance of past successes and failures for cities today.
The YIMBY Movement: Opportunities and Challenges for Planners
Yes In My Back Yard, most commonly referred to as YIMBY, is a grassroots social movement advocating for an increase in housing development at the regional, city, and neighborhood levels. This course examines YIMBY organizational structures and the roots, goals, setbacks, successes, and tactics of the movement.
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.
Local Regulation of Marijuana Businesses
This course examines the role of local regulation in states that have legalized marijuana. Learn about marijuana components and products, federal and state laws, zoning, and social equity issues.
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.
Introduction to City Planning 3: Midcentury Modern (1940-1979)
Discover the impact of World War II and the Cold War in shaping city planning practices and how the tragic destruction and loss of life in World War II somehow created opportunities for planners to test new ideas.
Transportation Planning: Land Use and Transportation Systems
This course includes a brief history of how land use and transportation have co-evolved over the last 150 years and reviews the roles of transportation systems and technology in influencing land value and locational decision.
Introduction to City Planning 2: Modern Ideas of City Planning (1900-1939)
Explore the development of the city and city planning from 1900 to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Learn how the birth of city planning as a formal practice shaped the cities that defined the century.