All Housing Courses
Gephi for Network Analysis and Visualization
Network Analysis helps urban planners, designers, and policy makers explore the dynamics and complexities of social networks and organizations. This course demonstrates the ways you can use the open-source Gephi software to visualize and analyze online social networks.
Photoshop CS5 for Planners - Introduction
Design professionals widely recognize Adobe Photoshop as the premier image editing software, with many valuable applications for urban planning. This course gives planners a step-by-step introduction to the basic tools of Photoshop CS5.
Photoshop CS5 for Planners - Intermediate
Design professionals widely recognize Adobe Photoshop as the premier image editing software, with many valuable applications for urban planning.This course builds upon the Introduction to Photoshop course, offering step-by-step instructions on more of the helpful tools that come with Photoshop CS5.
Video for Planners
Video can be a highly effective tool for communicating urban planning issues as well as increasing public knowledge and community engagement. This video course will walk you through the three steps of creating a video: capturing the footage, creating the video with editing software, and distributing video across the web. We’ll look at examples of urban planning departments that have used video well, and review different content types that you can use as a model.
SketchUp for Planners - Intermediate Part 1
Building on Introductory SketchUp for Planners, this course introduces intermediate SketchUp users to the program’s geolocation functions and demonstrates how to create more complex models of planned projects or developments. Additionally, this course illustrates how to create and export video walk-throughs of SketchUp models using the program’s animation features.
GIS Walkability Modeling
As the field of planning continues to trend toward multi-modal, sustainable transportation practices, tools to model or analyze the walkability of a given area have grown in number and complexity. In this course, students will learn how to apply ArcMap and the Spatial Analyst extension to model walkability. The course assumes students have a working knowledge of GIS and basic familiarity with Spatial Analyst.
Photoshop CS5 for Planners - Advanced
Adobe Photoshop is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier image editing software, with a great many valuable applications for urban planning. This course builds upon the Introduction to Photoshop and Intermediate Photoshop Courses, giving you step-by-step instructions on some of the advanced tools that come with Photoshop CS5.
Ethics: Balancing a Business Friendly Planning Environment, Part 2
Over the past several years, the private sector, led by developers, has increasingly courted, conflicted and collaborated with planning departments amid shrinking budgets. As business interests engage and influence public agencies and planning strategy, the role of ethics is of increasing importance for the practicing planner. This is the second of a two-part series that evaluates and analyses the role of planners, from public window staff to department heads, in an increasingly business-friendly environment.
CommunityViz Introduction
In this course you will learn practical applications for CommunityViz, one of the world's premiere GeoDesign and planning scenario tools. Planners, resource managers, local and regional governments, and others use CommunityViz to help them make decisions about development, land use, transportation, conservation and more.
Introductory Population Analysis with Excel
Whether you're new to population analysis or just need a refresher, this course offers a comprehensive overview of the steps necessary to conduct analysis and develop projections using publicly available data. The course reviews Census data and builds skills, such as population projection, cohort survival, and concentration calculations that are essential for every professional in the planning and design community.
Introductory Housing Analysis with Excel
Planners play a crucial role in making housing more affordable and livable. In this course, you will learn about basic market principles, how to judge housing needs, and how to meet that housing need through affordable housing—all the data and analysis skills needed to estimate housing needs.
Introductory Urban Economics Analysis with Excel
Economic data is all around us. When we buy coffee or go to the movies, each of those actions involve an economic exchange or a trade of resources. This course teaches Microsoft Excel in applying the concepts of economics to the work of planners. By discussing data analysis techniques, such as sector analysis and economic base calculation with location quotient, you will gain the skills to work with economic data and become a more informed participant in the economic marketplace.
Illustrator for Planners - Advanced
Adobe Illustrator is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier vector drawing software, with many valuable design and mapping applications for urban planning. This course builds upon the Intermediate Illustrator for Planners course, going into more detail on how the program can be used for logo design, map making and other uses.
SketchUp for Planners - Intermediate Part 2
In addition to accurately modeling projects, as demonstrated in the introductory courses, SketchUp is also useful for illustrating more abstract concepts, such as FAR, dimensional requirements and design guidelines. This course demonstrates how planners use SketchUp to illustrate requirements in zoning codes, design guidelines and form based codes.
Ethics: Balancing a Business Friendly Planning Environment
Over the past few decades and increasingly over the past several years, the private sector, led by developers, has increasingly courted, conflicted and collaborated with planning departments amid shrinking budgets. As business interests engage and influence public agencies and planning strategy, the role of ethics is of increasing importance for the practicing planner. This is the first of a two-part series that evaluates and analyses the role of planners, from public window staff to department heads, in an increasingly business-friendly environment.
InDesign for Planners - Intermediate
Adobe InDesign is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier document layout software, with a number of valuable applications for urban planning. This course builds upon the Introduction to InDesign course, giving you step-by-step instructions on some of the more complex tools that come with InDesign CS6.
InDesign for Planners - An Introduction
Adobe InDesign is widely recognized among design professionals as the premier document layout software, with a number of valuable applications for urban planning. This course gives you a step-by-step introduction to the basic tools of InDesign CS6.
SketchUp for Planners - Intermediate Part 3
Combining SketchUp and Adobe Creative Suite, this course demonstrates how to use SketchUp together with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to create illustrative and informative photo simulations, perspective views, sections and site plans.
SketchUp for Planners - An Introduction
Get started using SketchUp, the popular, easy-to-learn 3D digital modeling program. This course provides an introduction to how planners and architects represent three-dimensional objects in two-dimensions, with step-by-step instructions for creating and using simple 3D models.
Tactical Urbanism: An Introduction
Developed in conjunction with other movements, the Tactical Urbanism approach allows a host of local actors to test new concepts before making substantial political and financial commitments. Sometimes sanctioned, sometimes not, Tactical Urbanism features the following five characteristics: phased instigation, meeting local planning challenges, realistic and short term, low risk-high gain, and stakeholder capacity building.