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

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 The 4BC report contains a wide range of recommendations including the addressing of out-of-date street design standards, the harmonising of VAT rates for new build and refurbishment – which incentivise demolition and rebuild, ignoring embedded carbon,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

Our next event is the upcoming Multi-Level City on 10 March 2020. As our cities grow up, out and down, it is time we better understood how the different levels of these complex urban environments relate to one another. This event will focus on the often competing demands for space in our cities, and consider how we can make best use of what we have available. From rooftops to the subsurface, our speakers will highlight emerging best practice and innovations in the way we plan our cities vertically, and lead a discussion on how we can make sure that we don’t waste the precious space we have available.

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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