Founded in 1978, the Urban Design Group (UDG) is a campaigning membership organisation with over 1000 members who care about the quality of life in our cities, towns and villages, and believe that raising standards of urban design is central to its improvement.

The UDG website contains a wealth of information for anyone interested in urban design including details of urban design practices, university courses, publications and job vacancies, as well as future urban design events. Our regular email newsletter Urban Update is a one-stop-shop for urban design news, articles and blog posts.

Scroll down to read more about our key current initiatives:

• Strategic Urban Design
• Modernising Street Design Practice
• Increasing Local Authority Skills

Due to the Corovid 19 pandemic, UDG staff are now all working from home. All forthcoming events have been cancelled, including sadly the Student and Book Awards (shortlist will still be announced in the next few days). We hope to reschedule as soon as possible and virtual events are in the pipeline. More info to follow, in the meantime be safe, do your bit.

18 February 2020: Letter goes to Minister calling for Design Quality Unit to ensure the recommendations of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission are followed through. The 4BC report contains a wide range of recommendations including the addressing of out-of-date street design standards, the harmonising of VAT rates for new build and refurbishment – which incentivise demolition and rebuild, ignoring embedded carbon, through to the democratisation of planning.  See Briefing sheet in next news item.

The letter stems from an initial idea by UDG Exec member Chris Martin, of Urban Movement, which has gained the support of the Place Alliance, Civic Voice, CPRE, Trees and Design Action Group, Academy of Urbanism and Design Council. Read letter in full

UDG have compiled a Briefing Sheet providing an overview of “Living with Beauty”, the final report from the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission published January 2020 by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. You can download the UDG briefing sheet here and the full BBBC report here

With the current uncertainty regarding how Covid19 will spread in the coming few weeks, we have put on hold all our events for the next few months, although we hope to offer a virtual alternative. More info to follow.

See our events lisitings page - plenty of great stuff in the archives!

If you missed it, you can watch this year’s Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture with Professor Kate Jeffery below. UCL’s Gustave Tuck lecture theatre was packed out for her fascinating talk on what neuroscience can tell us about our sense of place and sense of direction.

Visit our events page for additional future events. See our events archive archive, including the Future High Street Fund: inspiration for success. Presentations, key ideas and recommendations...

Last year we went BIG - big screen, big turnout and big events.

A massive thank you to our 20 Conference Speakers, 220 delegates, all our sponsors and to everyone else who helped to make this one of our most successful Conferences yet! More info here

Fabulously preceded by the job useful Design Quality Summit which announced the launch of Design : Midlands, and the fun and dynamic Urban DesignFest. 

Thanks for all the positive feedback and tweets, we will build on it #PeopleFriendlyPlaces

As always, we couldn't put on such an ambitious event without the continuing and generous support of our sponsors GreenBlue Urban, Hardscape, Pegasus Group, Dar, Savills, Barton Willmore, Boyer, Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, Urban Movement, RIBA Midlands, LI West Midlands and Glenn Howells Architects.

News on Conference 2020 coming soon!

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