All Housing Courses
The First Five Years: A Practical Land Use Toolbox for New Planners
This practical course offers an essential "land use toolbox" for early-career planners working in both the public and private sectors that outlines how core planning processes, from permits and development reviews to public meetings and everyday counter interactions, actually work in practice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Prospects for Zoning Reform
Catch up on the contemporary policy debates about zoning reform in the United States by learning from one of the nation’s leading voices on the subject, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jenny Schuetz.