All Census Courses
Digital Accessibility for Planners – Web
Explore techniques to make their web content created by planners accessible to people with disabilities and compliant with regulations and laws that support disability access. Examples include social media, public outreach and input mechanisms and agency and plan websites.
Digital Accessibility for Planners: Documents - Part 1
By the end of this course, planners will be able to address common access barriers in documents they produce. The first course will provide an introduction to the topic and initial skills, while the second course will dive into more "advanced" skills.
Generative AI Tools and Workflows for Urban Planning
This course introduces planners to the fundamentals of Generative AI (GenAI) and its practical uses in creating text, images, videos, and designs. It highlights how these tools can enhance and streamline urban planning practice.
What Is Generative AI and Why It Matters for Urban Planning
This course introduces urban planners to Generative AI (GenAI), covering its fundamentals and demonstrating how it can create text, images, videos, and designs to enhance planning practices.
Resilience Planning for Heat and Drought Events
Learn how cities can prepare their infrastructure and social services for heat waves and droughts in a warming world.
Resilience Planning for Coastal Hazards
Across the world, sea levels are rising and storm surge events are intensifying, while development is increasing in vulnerable coastal areas and groundwater depletion is causing land to sink. Urban planners are uniquely positioned to join the battle against rising seas.
U.S. Housing Policy: What Every Planner Needs to Know
Planners play an essential role in understanding and addressing the regulatory, social, and economic barriers to affordable housing. This course offers an overview of U.S. housing policy from its historical roots to modern challenges and solutions.
Green Infrastructure
This course defines green infrastructure, highlights its types and benefits, discusses monetary valuation and financing, and explores its role in addressing climate change, equity, and technological change.
Landscape Design for Social Sustainability, Part 2
Continue exploring how designers can create built environments that foster vibrant, engaged communities through contemporary theories and case study examples around social sustainability in landscape design.
Landscape Design for Social Sustainability, Part 1
Discover how and why the built environment succeeds or fails at supporting thriving, diverse communities, and how designers can create mechanisms that allow communities to enjoy and improve their environments to suit their needs and desires.
History of U.S. Landscape Architecture, Part 2
Picking up in 1970, this course explores how the role and uses of public parks changed and how the role of the landscape architect expanded to that of advocate, facilitator, and teacher in the late 20th century and the era of climate change.
History of U.S. Landscape Architecture, Part 1
Kristin Faurest explores the history of the profession of landscape architecture from its origins through the 1960s, providing a vibrant global context of how humankind has shaped its landscape over the ages.
E-Waste: A Growing Concern in Waste Management
Understand the alarming growth of electronic waste and its massive impact on the waste stream, explore innovative approaches used by communities to combat this crisis, and discover the far-reaching consequences of mishandling electronic waste.
Building Bad, Part 1: How Architectural Utility is Constrained by Politics
Discover the theory of “Building Bad”: an examination of the costs and benefits that can limit the functionality of buildings in exchange for profits.
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
This course discusses crime as an environmental justice issue and reviews techniques that successfully reduce crime and make communities safer and healthier through Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) theory.
Lighting Regulations and Dark Sky Places
Learn best practices for crafting lighting regulations and dark sky designations that protect night skies and improve environmental and public health.
Introduction to Lighting and Light Pollution
Discover the history and impact of light pollution on human health, the environment, wildlife, ecosystems, and the night sky.
Prospects for Zoning Reform
Catch up on the contemporary policy debates about zoning reform in the United States by learning from one of the nation’s leading voices on the subject, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jenny Schuetz.
Introduction to Transit Oriented Development
Few terms are as common in the discussion of city and regional planning in the 21st century as transit oriented development (TOD)—the planning and designing of high-demand land uses at or near highly efficient modes of transportation.
The Right Price for Curb Parking
Setting the right price for on-street, curb parking, requires a thorough understanding of the theory and practice of demand-based pricing.