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All Census Courses
Regulating Electronic Message Centers
This course provides practical, solution-focused guidance for regulations that leverage digital sign technology while protecting community aesthetic values and safety concerns. This course is available for free.
Introduction to Healthy Communities
This course provides an overview of the healthy community movement and the relationship between health and planning.
Producing Engaging Documents
Learn to combine text and graphics into a coherent document. At the end of this course, you will be able to identify all the elements of a document, understand their purpose, and use them effectively.
Editing for Sense and Accuracy
This course reviews approaches and tools to make editing routine and useful. At the end of this course, you will know how and when to edit. You'll be able to set up a style sheet, apply it to a document, and refine your work to create a polished document.
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.
Form-Based Codes 101: Citywide and Countywide Code Updates
The final course in the "Form-Based Codes 101" series explores citywide form-based coding—the assessment of an entire city to determine where form-based code application should occur.
Form-Based Codes 101: Legal Aspects
This course explores the legal issues of creating and using a form-based code.
Form-Based Codes 101: Preparing a Form-Based Code
This course explores basic questions and decisions to consider when preparing a form-based code. It also covers the different approaches to regulating urban form and provides guidance for selecting an organizing principle for your form-based code. Finally, the course explains the visioning and creating of a plan, followed by drafting, testing, and assembling your code.
Form-Based Codes 101: Corridors
Corridors have historically been a key element of the urban fabric of every American town and city, yet they are also commonly problematic. This course looks at the roots of the problem for examples of how corridors can be designed and coded.
Economic Thinking for Planners: Local Government and Governance
This course uses economic thinking to investigate local government. The course includes discussions of public goods, market failure, private communities, and homevoter cities.
Crafting Engaging Email Newsletters with Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the leading internet-based email creation programs, and this course will lead you through the process of establishing an account, creating a branded template for repeated use, and crafting compelling content using text and images.
Economic Thinking for Planners: Cities, Externalities, and Governance
Through history, people have become better off as they urbanized. This course investigates how and why the quality of life has improved in cities.
Defensible Sign Regulations
Communities regulate the characteristics of signs to achieve multiple goals, such as limiting driver distraction, maintaining the aesthetic character of the community, and implementing aspects of related plans. This course will show participants how to draft—and adopt—sign ordinances that accomplish those purposes while conforming with the First Amendment.
Regulating Sex Businesses, Part 2: Practical Tips
This course will provide practical tips for developing local zoning and licensing regulations for sexually oriented businesses. This course builds on material from Part 1 of this two-part series.
Regulating Sex Businesses, Part 1: Principles and Foundations
This course shows how to lay the foundation for ordinances that mitigate the negative effects of sex businesses while conforming with constitutional requirements under the First Amendment.
Economic Thinking for Planners: Gains from Trade, Labor, and Immigration
This course focuses on the example of the Prisoner's Dilemma to illustrate the fact that gains from trade opportunities are lost if transactions and/or communications costs are high, property rights and contracting rules are not enforced, and levels of trust are low.
Economic Thinking for Planners: Overview
This course shows how "Economic Thinking" can inform our thinking on big questions like why some countries are rich while some are poor and how so many us have become so much better off than our ancestors.
Podcasting for Planners
Audio editing is a great way to tell a story, share information, create a digital record of events, or improve community outreach. In this course, learn the basics of podcasting and audio editing.
Planning and the Law: Procedural Due Process
The United States Constitution protects rights to "due process." In a land use law context, due process is why local governments must treat legislative and quasi-judicial decision making differently. At the end of this course, students will be able to differentiate between legislative and quasi-judicial decisions and to understand the due process implications of the distinction.
Planning and the Law: The Takings Clause
This course will help students understand and explore three legal concepts borne of the United States Constitution's Takings Clause: eminent domain, regulatory takings, and exactions. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify whether a particular government action is at risk of violating the Takings Clause.