All Video & Multimedia Courses
The Future of Cities After COVID-19
This virtual panel discussion focuses on the potential for the COVID-19 pandemic to influence the development, demographic, and environmental trends of the future. Speakers: Allison Arieff, William Fulton, Scott Frazier, and Mariela Alfonzo. Moderator: James Brasuell.
The Human Scale
The Human Scale juxtaposes the urban experiences of cities across the World to raise questions about the costs of modernity and to argue in favor of city planning that reclaims the public realm for social life. This new approach to planning is measured by walking distances, social interactions, and social inclusion, rather than vehicle speeds and parking spaces.
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
What makes good public spaces work, and why are some public spaces underused? Over the course of this film, William Whyte details insights into seven basic factors of successful public spaces: suitable space, interaction with the street, the sun, food, water, trees, and, finally, a term Whyte calls triangulation, or the ability of a public space to bring people together.
History of City Planning 5: The City of Tomorrow
Learn why city planning is crucial to the urban future and why the success of future cities will depend on the extent to which they are sustainable, equitable, and how they use technology to serve citizens. Evaluate the key challenges facing cities in the future and, importantly, potential solutions for those challenges.
History of City Planning 4: Planning in the Postmodern Age (1980-Today)
Survey the key economic, environmental, sociopolitical, and technological shifts responsible for the evolution of city planning from 1980 to contemporary times. Assess historical urban planning movements through a critical lens, as course instructor Jason Luger discusses the relevance of past successes and failures for cities today.
The YIMBY Movement: Opportunities and Challenges for Planners
Yes In My Back Yard, most commonly referred to as YIMBY, is a grassroots social movement advocating for an increase in housing development at the regional, city, and neighborhood levels. This course examines YIMBY organizational structures and the roots, goals, setbacks, successes, and tactics of the movement.
Introduction to Smart Cities
This course explores the characteristics and the challenges of smart cities, as well as the potential opportunities for a smart cities approach within the urban design and urban planning fields. This course also discusses the drivers and the essential technologies in a smart city.
Defining Neighborhoods
This course reviews the varying definitions of neighborhoods and examines methods for defining a physical basis and tangible meaning to neighborhoods based on the location of neighborhood centers, boundaries, and spatial extents.
History of City Planning 3: Midcentury Modern (1940-1979)
Discover the impact of World War II and the Cold War in shaping city planning practices and how the tragic destruction and loss of life in World War II somehow created opportunities for planners to test new ideas.
History of City Planning 2: Modern Ideas of City Planning (1900-1939)
Explore the development of the city and city planning from 1900 to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Learn how the birth of city planning as a formal practice shaped the cities that defined the century.
History of City Planning 1: Ancient Times to the Modern Age (7,500 BC to 1900)
Understand the history of urban planning through the context of the development of the earliest cities. Learn about key developments, innovations, and debates in early city planning and apply an analytic lens to the birth of the modern city.
The Ethics of Disruptive Transportation Technologies
This course discusses the process for making ethical decisions as part of planning for disruptive technologies.
Beyond Complete Streets for Walking and Biking
This course covers current practices in planning and implementation of infrastructure for biking and walking.
Understanding the Great Recession
This course explores the causes of the Great Recession, the recession's impact on local policy discussions, and how planners should think about economic impacts when thinking about long-term plans.
The American City, Part 4: Complexity and Pattern in the City
Understand how sustainable urbanism can be a crucial component of the urban pattern, or otherwise subverted by government regulations and business models.
Missing Middle Housing: Meeting the Growing Demand for Walkable Urbanism
Learn about Missing Middle Housing and how to integrate these types into existing neighborhoods.
The American City, Part 3: Learning from the Grid
This course demonstrates the well-defined formal composition and spatial processes of how American cities evolve over time.
The American City, Part 2: The Invention of a New Scale
Understand how the physical characteristics of block size and street length distinguish American cities from earlier models of urbanism, and the implications of these physical characteristics for sustainability in the 21st century.
The American City, Part 1: A Brief History of the Regular Grid
Learn why the regular grid has been a standard part of the town planning vocabulary around the world for nearly five millennia.
Economic Thinking for Planners: Cities, Externalities, and Governance
Through history, people have become better off as they urbanized. This course investigates how and why the quality of life has improved in cities.