All Urban Design Courses
Decking Highways: Reconnecting Communities
New
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
New
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.
Principles of Intersection Design
Lennart Nout and Nick Falbo explain how Dutch traffic engineers make decisions around intersection design and dissect the crown jewel of Dutch bike infrastructure: the protected bike lane intersection.
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.
Planning Commissioner Training
The new "Planning Commissioner Training" series offers citizen planners a chance to learn the tools to make a positive impact in their communities (available as a separate subscription).
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.
Introduction to Dutch Network Planning
An overview of how the Netherlands became the safest country in the world for cycling, and how other countries can replicate their success by thinking about cycling infrastructure on a network level.
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.
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.
Placemaking for Innovation: Creating Innovation Ecosystems
The knowledge economy will dominate job growth by 2040, making local innovation a must. To attract the educated workforce needed to keep up, regions must focus on placemaking to create innovation ecosystems — vibrant, mixed-use areas where people can live, work, and interact.
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.
Planning in an Era of Disruptive Change
The 21st century is a time of accelerating, disruptive change with profound implications for local communities. Unlock the planning foresight needed to navigate a rapidly changing social, economic, technological, and environmental 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.
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?
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.