After the Urban Design Group’s initial establishment by New York City Mayor John Lindsay in 1967, and its subsequent dismantling in 1980 by Mayor Ed Koch, the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) Urban Design Division (UDD) was re-established by Amanda Burden during Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration in 2007.
Since then, the UDD has steered major developments like the Gowanus, Long Island City, and Jamaica Neighborhood Rezonings. It helped realize New York City’s first Street Design Manual, and the 2010 award-winning Active Design Guidelines. The UDD is credited with creating synergies between disparate city agencies, community groups, and developers—entities that may otherwise not find common ground at the negotiating table. But the UDD may not be around for much longer, at least not in its current form.
On December 17, 2025, DCP executive director Edith Hsu-Chen had a verbal conversation with UDD announcing that employees will be moved into different departments. Then, on December 18, an email was sent from DCP commissioner Dan Garodnick, who will likely be reappointed, to UDD formally announcing the decision. AN has reviewed this email.
The announcement came as a shock to many: Why did this happen just days before the Mamdani administration took over?
The Plan
Should the reorganization go forward, Erick Gregory, DCP Chief Urban Designer and Director of Urban Design, will keep his title, however there will be no more UDD to direct. And Sagi Golan, Deputy Director of Urban Design at DCP, will become Senior Urban Design Specialist and a “go-to source for on-the-ground process and policy discussions,” Garodnick said in his email to UDD employees.
The remaining UDD employees, around 10 people, will be moved into “divisions across the agency,” according to Garodnick’s email.
No one in the UDD was consulted about the decision before it was announced just days before Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration, according to a source familiar with the plan. The decision was met with bewilderment and pushback by New York City planners, architects, and urban designers. Many planning professionals are frustrated with the lack of transparency.
“They’re moving very quickly. Dan [Garodnick] wants this to be in place by the end of the week,” Jeffrey Shumaker told AN today.
Shumaker joined the UDD in 2007 under Burden’s leadership and served as its Chief Urban Designer and Director of Design. “I can tell you that urban designers have literally been in tears over this, they don’t understand,” he continued. “First of all, why is it happening now? Why do such a big move before a new [DCP] commissioner and executive director come in?”
DCP executive director Edith Hsu-Chen defended the decision as a natural evolution of the UDD.
“Over time, urban design has evolved from a specialized function into a core part of DCP’s work, with urban designers embedded in borough offices and applying their expertise to neighborhood plans and private applications,” Chen told AN. “This reorganization builds on that success, bringing urban designers into citywide, policy-focused divisions, ensuring that the values of good urban design are reflected across the agency.”
“This reorganization formalizes urban designers’ place across DCP’s teams and ensures that they have a central role in shaping the agency’s work moving forward,” Chen added. “We’re confident that the important work of DCP’s urban designers will not only continue but be enhanced in this structure.”
Those Opposed
Amanda Burden, now a principal at Bloomberg Associates, opposes the decision. “The Design Division was essential in both crafting large projects in-house as well as commenting on large submissions,” Burden told AN in a statement. “They also were critical in making even small projects work better and creating a sense of place.”
“In addition,” Burden elaborated, “the Division was key to helping communities better understand proposals, enabling them to comment on them and make them better. It was a team that was collectively productive and skillful. Individual designers in separate borough offices do not have the benefits of collaborative input and cannot effectively advise the Commissioner on an ongoing basis.”
SCAPE founder Kate Orff, who directs the Urban Design Program at Columbia GSAPP, told AN she is also opposed to the decision: “The eleventh hour elimination and restructuring of urban design at the NYC Department of City Planning was an unwelcome surprise,” she said. “So much gets lost in the alphabet soup of city agencies—DDC, EDC, DPR, DCP, DOT. We need a group of committed urban designers to stitch it all together.”
“I’m not sure how this reorganization advances the future city we want,” Orff affirmed. “Urban design has been critical to the renewal of the great cities of the world from Paris to Barcelona and beyond and it is more important than ever that great urban design ensures that New Yorkers have a livable and affordable city to call home.”
Julio Salcedo-Fernandez, the Urban Design Program director at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College, is equally critical. “Just like with the DCP, there are obvious benefits in operating at the level of the city and the borough allowing for feedback loops and innovation to oscillate between scales.”
“It would seem to me that solely or mostly operating at the borough scale diminishes that capacity and limits the kind of spatial and integrated solutions New York desperately needs as it looks to densify whilst addressing social and environmental disparities,” Salcedo-Fernandez added. “If there is any doubt of the need for urban design, look no further than the less equipped and spatially mired neighborhoods surrounding recent up zonings from Brooklyn to the Bronx.”
Claire Weisz, WXY founder, affirmed the importance of good urban design, noting, “New York City has seen tangible benefits from embedding an urban design group into city planning. From the High Line and Freshkills Park to East Midtown Rezoning, from Spofford to Gowanus and Stapleton, these efforts show how urban design strengthens planning across diverse contexts.”
“Organizational structures change, but the underlying principles remain constant,” Weisz continued. “Planning needs design, and design needs planning. Together, they can help answer the long-term interests of New Yorkers, especially at moments when public and private priorities must be negotiated for everyone’s benefit.”
AN emailed the Mayor’s Office and Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg to see whether or not they will continue dismantling the UDD after a new DCP Commissioner and Executive Director is named in the coming weeks.
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