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

This 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! Read the report 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

Urban DesignFest panel of judges David Harrison (London Living Streets), Simon Delahunty Forrest (Birmingham City Council), Jane Findlay (President Elect, Landscape Institure) and Paj Valley (WPS) vigoroursly debate the winner of our poster competition who is...

Liz Reynolds of Urben! Click through on poster image to see her slide presentation.

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.

Watch sponsor videos below, with some fantastic showcasing of Birmingham.

The National Urban Design Awards celebrate the best in the design of towns and cities, streets and spaces and for 2020 will offer up a something more than a little different. 

After 10 years of the National Urban Design Awards we think it’s time to investigate the lessons to be learnt from the 80 winners and finalists of previous Awards. How do we create, build, deliver good urban design? 

There’s no change to the Student, Book or Lifetime Achievement Awards but for the Public Sector and Practice Project we plan to mine the wealth of experience and expertise of our past shortlists and in reviewing, find out what these projects can tell us about how to deliver best practice urban design in the UK. Read more.

Our next event is the upcoming Central London Walking Networks 28 November 2019 half-day conference with London Living Streets in conjunction with Transport for London. Central London is bursting with people on foot. Yet most of its streets are devoted to and dominated by motor traffic. The Central London Walking Network proposes a web of routes that will make walking the easy, natural and safe option for all its residents, workers and visitors.

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...

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