Urban Design Forum

The Urban Design Forum is a not-for-profit New York organization that seeks to amplify the influence and understanding of urban design’s role in creating dynamic, cooperative, competitive, and sustainable cities. The organization was formed from the merger of the Institute for Urban Design and the Forum for Urban Design in March 2014.

Between 1970 and 1979, Ann Ferebee, the founder of the Institute for Urban Design, was the editor of the magazine Urban Design, previously titled Design & Environment. This publication was an inter-professional magazine for architects, engineers, city planners, landscape architects and designers. In 1978 (October 18–21), Ferebee and Urban Design organized an international conference titled “Cities Can Be Designed” at the Citigroup Center (then called the Citicorp Center) in New York. The Institute for Urban Design was incorporated a few months earlier in August 1978. In November 1979, the Institute launched a bi-monthly magazine called Urban Design International, wherein advancements and innovations in urban design were shared. Famed graphic designer and inventor of the I ♡NY design, Milton Glaser was the magazine’s Design Consultant and creator of the Institute's logo.

The Institute for Urban Design was unique in both its scale and purpose in that it was the first national institution in America to focus solely on issues of urban design.

In October 2005 the Forum for Urban Design held its inaugural event "New Orleans Rebuilds" just two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

In 2007, the "Cities Conference on Urban Design" brought together city planners from Boston, London, New York, Singapore, Toronto, and Vancouver to discuss public-realm design challenges in the city's financial core.

In 2008, the Forum organized a presentation on bike share projects in different world cities along with a free bike share pilot program that provided bicycles in Red Hook for use throughout New York City. The Forum, in partnership with the Storefront for Art and Architecture, then used the weekend of free bike use to study how bike sharing could work in New York City five years before Citi Bike officially launched.

On March 13, 2014 the two organizations officially joined together to create the Urban Design Forum. Today, the Urban Design Forum continues the work of both organizations, hosting programs on modern urban issues and publishing the Urban Design Review.

In April 2014, the Urban Design Forum's inaugural program discussed public housing across the country with "The State of Public Housing" panel, the first in a series of events called The Housing Question focusing on affordable and equitable housing.

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