About Us

URBAN RESEARCH PROJECTS | LONDON is a research office for London's urban issues that develops projects, provides analysis, influences plans, and helps deliver informed urban change. Our objective is to make research inspiring, accessible and effective.

Situated within The CASS Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, we work with researchers within the university to record and disseminate existing research and its influence. Building on these resources, we produce new projects and proposals to deliver change in the city.

Our work includes area strategies, brief writing and feasibility studies, physical and social evidence gathering and analysis, workshops, guided walks, debates and publications.

Our office also holds a detailed library on London urban studies. We receive commissions from private and public sector organisations and work with researchers at the forefront of urban thinking.



PEOPLE

Lara Kinneir

Lara is Course Leader of the MA in Spatial Planning and Urban Design, and Director of Urban Research Projects | London, an inter-faculty research and projects office within the Cass Faculty of Arts, Architecture and Design and the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences.

She is interested in people, places, patterns and the socio-political dynamics of urban areas. She has a multidisciplinary design and strategy background having worked in architectural and urban design practices, local government and the charity sector for the past 10 years.

Lara worked at Design for London, the Mayor of London's architecture and urbanism team, for four years. Her specific role was on the Olympic Fringe masterplans and the 5 Olympic Host Borough visioning studies, to shape and steer a longer-term approach to regeneration around the Olympics and address the current high levels of multiple deprivation and poorly designed urban fabric. She led the delivery £6m of public realm and building projects from concept through to delivery for a number of Olympic Fringe sites and was on the client team of several notable East London masterplan developments including the recently completed Hackney Marshes Centre, and surrounding Marsh landscape improvement works.

She has worked in a number of architectural and design practices including Universal Design Studio and Barber Osgerby, DSDHA, and a community NGO in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Lara is currently doing a PhD at the CASS School of architecture on architectural urbanism through urban governance, and is a representative of the UN Habitat Partnership University Initiative on local urban governance.

She lectures and participates in design reviews in a number of architectural schools including the Royal College of Art, University of East London, the School of Architecture Limerick, University of Nicosia and Harvard GSD.

Julia Atkins

Julia is a senior research fellow in the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Humanities. She is director of Urban Research Projects/London, and has taught modules in different faculties and has collaborated and completed research projects for a variety of clients.

Julia's career in housing policy research spans 42 years from architectural consultancy to research in voluntary organisations, and housing policy research and development in local and regional government...

Most signifigantly, Julia was a director of the London Research Centre (LRC), one of the country's leading research teams working for all the London boroughs between 1986-2000 It was unique in that local government officers competed for and completed commissioned research from central government and a range of other statutory and voluntary organisations whilst at the same time fulfilling an annual programme of work for London local government.



Researchers and collaborators

Lee Wilshire

Hayley Harding

Adam Summerfield

Emma Rutherford


Contact

Urban Research Projects
London Metropolitan University
Central House
59-63 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7PF

Email: info@urbanresearchprojects.co.uk


Projects

Olympic Waterways: Past, Present & Future

A photographic study of the changes to waterways in and around the Olympic park.

After the Party: Housing & Community around the Olympic Park
Lower Lea Valley Study Tour

with Harvard GSD

Tourist Guide to Heathrow

Architecture Foundation Urban Pioneers Workshop.

Aviation in London

Autumn Design Charette

Tottenham Asset Trail

Research

New York & London Social Housing Study
Neighbourhood Planning

Hackney Wick Neighbourhood Plan Feasibility Study

Urban Governance in London
Cities of Conflict
Housing Design & Value Assessment