All Communications & Media 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.
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.
Principles of Materiality, Responsiveness, Inclusivity, and Impact
In this course, students will take a deep dive into the AA1000 AccountAbility standard and its four Principles: Inclusivity, Materiality, Responsiveness and Impact and how they integrate to develop a very well thought out framework.
Introduction to Urban Informatics
This course discusses how the field of urban informatics works. You will also learn about the technologies and concepts influencing Urban Informatics, including "Big Data," machine learning, visualization, and data-driven decision making.
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 4: Refining the End User Experience
Creating a VR experience is one thing, but managing its use at public events and integrating it into the urban design workflow is an extra, separate step. This course considers the bigger picture and covers a few ways to fine-tune the user’s experience for maximum success.
Virtual Reality for Planners 3: Working with Unity
This course provides a high-level overview of the process involved in creating a virtual reality application and teaches viewers how to assemble a virtual reality application from scratch using Unity how to make the process as successful as possible.
Virtual Reality for Planners 2: Modeling in SketchUp
This course provides a step-by-step SketchUp tutorial and teaches users how to create content appropriate for a virtual reality environment. Viewers will learn how to optimize the performance of their software and ensure success in the next steps of the process, including final model export to Unity.
Virtual Reality for Planners 1: Introduction
Virtual reality presents urban planners with a unique tool to create immersive virtual experiences that can inform visioning processes, design decision-making, and community engagement. Learn about the evolution of virtual reality technology, its key vocabulary and logistics, the benefits of virtual reality over traditional media, and what the future of public engagement may hold.
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.
Crowdsourcing and Urban Planning
Crowdsourcing is the gathering of ideas, content, voices, and services by leveraging the collective intelligence and wisdom of crowds.
Citizen Science in Urban Planning
This course introduces planners to citizen science and how citizen science can play a meaningful role in urban planning.
Building a Transit Map Web App
This course examines the entire process of building an interactive, web-based mapping application.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accounting for Cities
Greenhouse gas emissions accounting is a core tool for developing, implementing, and monitoring climate actions and strategies. This course provides a basic overview of concepts that can be supplemented with training in specific software.
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.
The DIY Form-Based Code: Research and Development
Covering concepts critical to developing the foundation for a code, this course takes a a tour through the creation of a code for the hypothetical city of Wrightville.
Video for Planners
Video can be a highly effective tool for communicating urban planning issues as well as increasing public knowledge and community engagement. This video course will walk you through the three steps of creating a video: capturing the footage, creating the video with editing software, and distributing video across the web. We’ll look at examples of urban planning departments that have used video well, and review different content types that you can use as a model.