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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.
Planning Implications and Design for AV Futures
Part 2 of this course considers the opportunities and challenges of adopting autonomous vehicles for the future of the built environment, safety and urban development.
Autonomous Vehicles: Technology, Trends and Planning Concerns
Explore the technology, terminology, history, trends and concerns behind autonomous vehicles and learn about the past, present and possible future of AVs on the global landscape — and the key challenges they present to planners.
Generative AI, Ethics, and the Future of Urban Planning
Explore the ethical and equity implications of using generative AI in urban planning. This course addresses bias, transparency, public trust, emerging tools like digital twins, and offers practical guidance for responsible adoption.
Walkable City 6: The Interesting Walk
People are most interested in other people — so an appealing walk is one shaped by urban design that hides parking lots, avoids blank walls and monotony, shows signs of human habitation and craftsmanship, celebrates regional character, and offers a human scale.
Walkable City 3: The Safe Walk (A)
Pedestrian deaths are up 78% since 2009. While car use and size are long-term issues, safer street design — like narrower lanes and two-way roads — can reduce speeding now.
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.
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.
The Good Street: A New Methodology for Balancing Place and Flow
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.
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.
Accessory Dwelling Units: Understanding America’s Newest Housing Typology
Explore the latest ADU policy developments from leading American cities, key challenges and opportunities for increasing or limiting ADU production, first-hand examples, and best practices in ADU affordability programs.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
The 2011 documentary film “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” documents the rapid rise and fall of a housing complex in St. Louis. Pruitt-Igoe became a symbol for the failure of public housing policy in the late 20th century.
Incremental Code Reform: Enabling Better Places
The Congress for the New Urbanism’s Project for Code Reform streamlines the zoning code reform process by providing local governments with place-specific incremental zoning code changes that address the most problematic barriers first, build political will, and ultimately create more walkable, prosperous, and equitable places.
Transit Service Design 101
In this course, we will review the principles of transit service design, how resources are allocated and accounted for, and using the Remix software platform, we will design and evaluate a new transit route.