All Equity 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.
Walkable City 5: The Comfortable Walk
To encourage walking, cities must create comfortable, well-designed pedestrian environments — like outdoor living rooms — with clear orientation, shade, tree cover, and cohesive design, achievable through tools like form-based codes, urban forestry plans, and strong urban design.
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.
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.
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.
How to Scope for Plan Implementation
Learn hands-on steps and procedures for creating a well-scoped and funding-ready planning study.
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.
History of U.S. Landscape Architecture, Part 2
Picking up in 1970, this course explores how the role and uses of public parks changed and how the role of the landscape architect expanded to that of advocate, facilitator, and teacher in the late 20th century and the era of climate change.
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.
Lighting Regulations and Dark Sky Places
Learn best practices for crafting lighting regulations and dark sky designations that protect night skies and improve environmental and public health.