All Equity Courses
Public Speaking, Communication, and Influence for Planners
New
Planners regularly present complex information to decision-makers, community members and project teams, yet many early-career planners receive little training in how to communicate ideas clearly, persuasively and confidently. This course helps planners strengthen their professional voice by developing skills in storytelling, public speaking and persuasive communication.
Generative AI, Ethics, and the Future of Urban Planning
Explore the ethical and equity implications of using generative AI in urban planning. This course addresses bias, transparency, public trust, emerging tools like digital twins, and offers practical guidance for responsible adoption.
Enhancing Public Participation with Generative AI
This tutorial shows how generative AI can enhance inclusive and responsive public participation in urban planning by summarizing feedback, tailoring outreach, and visualizing scenarios using real-world tools and examples.
Walkable City 2: The Useful Walk
Learn the principal components of “the useful walk,” how zoning can create walkability and boost housing density, and why visual components are key to a walkable city.
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.
Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
Jeff Speck explains his five principal reasons for building more walkable places — Economics, the Environment, Public Health, Equity, and Social Cohesiveness — arming practitioners with a full range of arguments in favor of pro-walkability planning.
Decking Highways: Reconnecting Communities
This course guides communities through the highway decking process from initial visioning through planning and implementation by exploring key motivations such as community goals, equity considerations, and technical challenges.
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.
Designing the Built Environment for People With Autism Spectrum Disorder
This course covers how autistic people experience urban and natural environments and the design techniques used to improve their experience.
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.
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.
Taking Meaningful Action Towards Fair Housing
This course dives deep into fair housing, exploring everything from the importance of equitable housing laws to practical strategies for planners to promote fairness in zoning and development.
Navigating the Ethical Landscape for AI in Urban Planning
Uncover some of the largest ethical issues related to using AI in urban planning and the steps cities around the world are taking to ensure fairness, honesty, and accountability as this revolutionary technology becomes more embedded in the modern world.
Planning the Plan: How to Develop the Scope for a Planning Study
Learn the basic steps involved in developing general planning processes, scope structure, and implementable outcomes.
Roadways for People, Part 2
Home in on the Community Solutions Based Approach through the example of a recent project in Baltimore, Maryland to re-reroute and update an Amtrak tunnel that would affect the predominantly Black neighborhood of Reservoir Hill.
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.
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.
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?