Urbanism
Environment
Design

info@urbed.coop

We are delighted that a press conference in London this morning announced URBED has been shortlisted for the 2014 Wolfson Economic Prize. As you may recall the prize was launched at the end of last year seeking answers to the question; ‘How would you deliver a new garden city which is visionary, economically viable, and popular’.
 
URBED’s submission was produced by David Rudlin with Dr Nicholas Falk, drawing on the full range of skills in the URBED office and friends such as Jon Rowland (Jon Rowland Urban Design) Pete Redman, Managing Director, Policy and Research at TradeRisks Ltd (financial advisors on housing and infrastructure  and Joe Ravetz (Co-Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology, University of Manchester) . The prize attracted more than 279 entries so we are delighted to have reached the final shortlist of five. We will spend the next couple of months developing our essay in more detail for the second round submission.
 
In order not to become mired in the detailed politics and practicalities of a particular place, we based our submission on the imaginary city of Uxcester (pronounced uss-ter). Uxcester is a lovely place, with two millennia of history, a complex local government structure and an engaged and articulate local community. There are at least a score of  places like Uxcester in the UK. We will be deciding over the next few days whether we use the second stage submission to apply the model to a real place.