All Equity 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.
Planning Implications and Design for AV Futures
Part 2 of this course considers the opportunities and challenges of adopting autonomous vehicles for the future of the built environment, safety and urban development.
Autonomous Vehicles: Technology, Trends and Planning Concerns
Explore the technology, terminology, history, trends and concerns behind autonomous vehicles and learn about the past, present and possible future of AVs on the global landscape — and the key challenges they present to planners.
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.
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.
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.
The Good Street: A New Methodology for Balancing Place and Flow
International urban design consultant Lennart Nout explains the Dutch method for balancing conflicts between urban vibrancy and traffic flow and between different modes of transportation.
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.
Good Speed by Design: A Network Approach to Traffic Calming
Lennart Nout explains how to slow down car traffic with a comprehensive, network-level approach that goes far beyond just speed bumps.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.