All Drawing & Painting Courses
US Disability Access Laws for Planners
Explore the key disability rights laws that shape planners' work — including the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Architectural Barriers Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 — to understand their core provisions.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
Explore the need and opportunity to reinvent aging mall sites into vibrant, inclusive, and economically valuable centers for 21st-century communities.
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.
Walking Towards Inclusion
Walkability's many benefits can lead to an increase in the value of housing. For low-income renters, this can mean displacement. David Dixon explains the main challenges to building equitable walkability and how planners can act to allow everyone to enjoy increased walkability in existing urban neighborhoods.
Planning Communities for Maximum Transit Access
World-renowned transit planner Jarrett Walker provides an overview of how land use and transportation planners can make their communities better for transit and the people who ride it.
Design for Peace and Democracy
Explore how our designed environments can promote and support peace and democracy using historic examples of how the built environment – including parks, squares and streets – can be an instrument of oppression and serve as forums for both tyranny and uprising. We’ll return to the U.S. for stories closer to home, and frame the future in hope and optimism.
Placemaking for Innovation: Creating Innovation Ecosystems
The knowledge economy will dominate job growth by 2040, making local innovation a must. To attract the educated workforce needed to keep up, regions must focus on placemaking to create innovation ecosystems — vibrant, mixed-use areas where people can live, work, and interact.
Planning in an Era of Disruptive Change
The 21st century is a time of accelerating, disruptive change with profound implications for local communities. Unlock the planning foresight needed to navigate a rapidly changing social, economic, technological, and environmental world.
Roadways for People, Part 1
Using Portland's I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project as a central case study, Lynn Peterson and co-instructor Elizabeth Doerr explore why and how we need a more inclusive, people-centered transportation planning process.
The 21st Century Comprehensive Plan
Uncover the emerging and valuable qualities of the 21st century comprehensive plan that can be used to define visions for the future, including robust community engagement, crosscutting themes, and an accountable implementation program.
Making Room for Home-Based Businesses
In this crash course on home-based businesses, Nolan Gray explores how reducing zoning regulations could help revitalize communities and encourage entrepreneurship across the country.
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.
Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix it
Nolan Gray presents the complex history of zoning regulation, showing how major legislative decisions led to the country's current state of car reliance, sprawl, and inequity. Now, zoning reform is in the air. But why stop at mere reform?
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.
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.
Placemaking for Community-Based Organizations
Learn how community organizations can enhance or expand their impact on their beloved neighborhoods through placemaking practices.
Public Transit During Covid-19: Challenges and Lessons
The Covid-19 pandemic decimated public transit service across the United States, causing significant decreases in ridership. Social equity subsequently suffered, with the riders who depend most on public transit feeling the most tangible impacts.
Crime and Urban Planning in the United States
The spatial patterns and environmental characteristics of urban crime offer planners an opportunity to contribute to building crime-resilient communities.
Just Suburbs: The New Frontier for Equity and Inclusion
Poverty is being displaced from central cities to suburbs. As a response, planners should look to strategies that create mixed-income neighborhoods—a place that everyone can call home.
Walkable Density: Building Livable, Equitable, and Resilient Communities
A new approach to density is an essential need, with multiple public benefits, empowering communities to more effectively manage the accelerating pace of demographic, economic, environmental, social, and technological change.