All Ethics 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.
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 2
Part two of this course series demonstrates more advanced techniques planners can use to ensure their documents are accessible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
Designing a Wayfinding System
Learn how to create a comprehensive wayfinding signage system for your municipality from start to finish.
Planning a Municipal Wayfinding System
Often overlooked, wayfinding is important for urban design, accessibility, and economic development. Learn the elements of a successful wayfinding system in this course.
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.
Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places
The economic, demographic, and technological forces reshaping suburbs are under-reported and misunderstood. Learn how suburbs can manage change while enhancing livability, economic opportunity, and fiscal responsibility.
A New Era of Downtown Opportunity: The Intersection of Housing and Innovation
Learn specific policy and urban design strategies for adapting downtowns to a new role: innovation communities.