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Urban Design

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Urban design-based research within the Bartlett School of Planning focuses on the following themes:

  • public space design and management
  • the design dimension of planning
  • questions of form, type and quality
  • the value of design.

Work on the morphological patterns that allow connections to be made at the neighbourhood level - and the impacts this has on public perceptions of place and quality of life - are ongoing, as are enquiries into the economics of design, the social use of space, coding and the desirable organisation of city form.

Research Projects

Evaluating the governance of design – the CABE experiment and beyond
Matthew Carmona and Claudio de Magalhaes

HOPUS: Housing Praxis for Urban Sustainability
Matthew Carmona

Local Environmental Quality: A New View on Measurement
Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhaes

Global Space, Contested Space? The Case of the 'New' London Squares
Matthew Carmona and Filipa Wunderlich

Design Code Pilot Programme Monitoring and Evaluation
Matthew Carmona, Quentin Stevens, Leo Hammond and Ruth Blum

The Development and Use of Design Codes in the UK
Matthew Carmona, Quentin Stevens and Stephen Marshall

Managing Public Urban Green Space: An International Comparative Study
Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhaes and Ruth Blum

The Value of Design, the Value of Public Space
Matthew Carmona and Jonathan Freeman

The Economic Value of Design in Commercial Office Development
Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhaes, Michael Edwards and Louise Sieh

Managing External Public Space
Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhaes, Leo Hammond and Ruth Blum

From Design Policy to Design Quality
Matthew Carmona and David Chapman

The Value of Urban Design
Matthew Carmona, Claudio de Magalhaes, and Michael Edwards

Design codes, how have they fared?
Matthew Carmona and Valentina Giordano