Mission

The Urban Design Forum seeks to amplify the influence and understanding of urban design’s role in creating dynamic, cooperative, competitive, and sustainable cities. By serving as a common platform for architects, landscape architects, planners, policy-makers, activists, developers, investors, academics and journalists, the Forum presents perspectives across disciplines to energize the debate on how to improve our cities and metropolitan regions.

To accomplish this mission, the Urban Design Forum engages its fellows through programs and publications that explore recent and innovative approaches in architecture, planning, engineering, transportation, landscape architecture, governance and community participation in the United States and around the world.

History

For 35 years, the Urban Design Forum has shaped the conversation around the design of New York City and cities around the world.

The Urban Design Forum traces back to 1979, when journalist Ann Ferebee established the Institute for Urban Design after a pioneering conference, The First National Conference on Urban Design: Cities Can Be Designed. A separate organization, the Forum for Urban Design, convened its inaugural conference in 2005 to discuss the reconstruction of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In the decades since, the Forum and Institute hosted symposia, roundtables, and debates on the defining issues facing our cities.

In 2014, the two organizations joined forces to become the Urban Design Forum. Learn more.