The Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design is awarded biennially to recognize exemplary urban design projects. Projects must be more than one building or an open space built anywhere in the world within the last ten years that makes a positive contribution to the public realm of a city and improves the quality of urban life in that context. The project must also demonstrate a humane and worthwhile direction for the design of urban environments.

The Urban Design Case Study Archive is a project of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design developed collaboratively between faculty, students, developers, and professional library staff. Specifically, it is an ongoing collaboration between the GSD’s Department of Urban Planning and Design and the Frances Loeb Library. This project received funding from the Veronica Rudge Green Prize for its development and was originally envisioned by professors Peter Rowe and Rahul Mehrotra. 

As a collection of case studies, the archive aims to support the study of the human settlements in urban areas through rich descriptions of urban design projects and related interpretations, drawings, and images. It makes use of excellent tools for the sophisticated search and visualization needed to support its scholarly research and pedagogical aims. 

At present, each of some 40 case studies includes digital photographs of the site context, the projects themselves, and other graphic representation such as site plans, sections, and elevations, as well as texts, commentary, articles, analyses, bibliographies, people involved and interviews to facilitate and encourage discoverability and a flexible navigation within and across case studies depending on research interests. Discoverability is further articulated via three different search possibilities that include the name of the specific project, the project’s location (geography), and project type. 

The project launched in 2023 with 19 urban design projects that were awarded the Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design and will continue to grow in demand to cover urban design and other settlement projects of excellence across the globe.  

We thank the funders, faculty, staff, students, and the developers Performant Solutions, LLC for bringing this project to fruition.