I need 12 HSW credits before June and want courses that dig into plazas, street grids, and public-life data, not just code refreshers. Has anyone taken NACTO’s 8-hour Urban Street Design session or ESRI’s ArcGIS Urban lab for AIA credit, and did it help you lay out better streets and plazas?
I did NACTO’s 8‑hour last spring; the curb zone/typology portions and the “public-life data” exercises helped me lay out a plaza retrofit — do a quick on‑site 30‑minute tally, then translate it into before/after cross‑sections you can test with your DOT. ESRI’s ArcGIS Urban lab was useful for scenario massing and right‑of‑way widths, but it only paid off once we loaded our city’s real counts and centerlines; otherwise it felt like a pretty SimCity demo. Both counted as HSW for me via the host provider, but confirm the AIA number before you register.
ArcGIS Urban lab helped me pressure‑test a plaza layout by sketching a 5‑minute walkshed, swapping street types, and using the daylight slider to dodge a perpetually shaded corner — like a wind tunnel for block plans. @elee, did you layer delivery windows or GTFS headways when you tested curb uses? Small caveat: it’s most useful if you bring your own parcels and network data, so prep that beforehand.
Building on @noah16: I got the most value by doing a 15‑minute lunchtime desire‑line trace on site, then testing only those paths against a 10–2 pm shadow window; it pushed us to rotate seating and pinch two radii that were dead in shade… Small caveat — the ESRI daylight tool is coarse at block scale, so I cross‑check with https://suncalc.org; which city are you in?
Under the “12 HSW before June” crunch, I’d take the NACTO session and, same week, do a 20‑minute curb‑radius and crossing‑time audit at one intersection; tightening radii on trace paper made our plaza edge read clearly and slowed turns enough to help lingering. ArcGIS Urban was useful too, but only after loading my own parcels plus GTFS — otherwise the street‑grid moves felt abstract, @william_jac43. Both were tagged LU/HSW through my AIA chapter last fall, but double‑check the current listing.