Urban Research (UR) is a book series devoted to speculation about the conditions and the future of the city. We publish projects ranging from the practical to the utopian, from community-generated plans for neighborhood transformation to outstanding outcomes from academic studios, visionary speculation by designers burning the midnight oil, and collations of arguments about the most urgent issues of urban growth and survival. Our remit is to get the word out about solutions that exceed the imaginative reach of "official" planning and design and to encourage the most vigorous debate. Upcoming volumes include: UR 7/8: Zoned Out! Race Displacement, and City Planning in New York City (edited by Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse); UR 9: Occupy All Streets, Olympic Urbanism and Contested Futures in Rio de Janeiro (edited by Bruno Carvalho, Mariana Cavalcanti, and Vyjayanthi Rao Venturupalli); UR 10: The Helsinki Effect, Public Alternatives to the Guggenheim Model of Culture-Driven Development (edited by Terike Haapoja, Andrew Ross, and Michael Sorkin); and UR 11 New York City (Steady State): Home Grown by Terreform.

Michael Sorkin is editor-in-chief of UR. He is an architect and urbanist, whose practice spans design, criticism, and teaching. He is founder and principal of Michael Sorkin Studio, a design practice is devoted to both practical and theoretical projects at all scales with a special interest in the city and in green architecture. In 2005, Sorkin founded Terreform, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and intervention in issues of urban morphology, sustainability, equity, and community planning. He also serves as architecture critic for the Nation and a contributing editor for Architectural Record. The author of numerous books, Sorkin is currently Distinguished Professor of Architecture and, since 2000, the director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York. Sorkin is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Mind Award (2013), a Guggenheim Fellow (2015), and an inaugural research fellow of the American Academy in China (2016).

Maria Cecilia Fagel is executive editor of UR. She is an architecture/urban researcher, critic, and writer. She studied architecture (BSArch from University of San Carlos Technological Center, Cebu), design management (BBA from Parsons, the New School for Design),  and design criticism (MFA from the School of Visual Arts). Prior to Terreform, she was a market research analyst for the New York–based advisor to Dentsu Japan. Her work has been published by the Architect's Newspaper, Verlag form GmbH & Co. KG, and the Cooper-Hewitt's DesignFile.

Isaac Gertman is creative director of UR. He is a graphic designer and educator with a keen interest in the overlapping social, cultural, and infrastructural systems found in cities. He leads design direction at the Independent Group, and teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2014, he was named a Public Access Design Fellow by the Center for Urban Pedagogy. His work has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Society of Publication Designers. Gertman received an MFA from the RISD and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Vyjayanthi Rao Venturupalli is senior editor of UR. She is an anthropologist by training and has held research and teaching positions at the New School for Social Research and at the University of Chicago, where she also received her doctorate. Her current work focuses on cities after globalization, specifically on intersections of urban planning, design, art, violence, and speculation. She is the author of numerous articles on these topics in scholarly journals, and the coeditor of Speculation, Now: Essays and Artwork (Duke University Press, 2015). She is also director of Terreform and is completing a manuscript on the spatial transformation of Mumbai.

UR Advisory Board: Tom Angotti/Hunter College, CUNY; Kazi Ashraf/Bengal Institute; M. Christine Boyer/Princeton University; Teddy Cruz/estudio teddy cruz; Mike Davis/UC, Riverside; Ana Maria Duran Calisto/Estudio AO; Anthony Fontenot/Woodbury School of Architecture; Susanna Hecht/UCLA; John Hill/New York Institute of Technology; Walter Hood/UC, Berkeley; Cindi Katz/Graduate Center, CUNY; Romi Khosla/Romi Khosla Design Studio; Thom Mayne/Morphosis Architects; Suha Ozkan/World Architecture Community; Quilian Riano/DSGN AGNC; Colin Robinson/OR Books; Jonathan Solomon/School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Tau Tavengwa/African Center for Cities; Srdjan Weiss/Normal Architecture Office; Eyal Weizman/Goldsmiths College; Mabel O. Wilson/GSAPP, Columbia University; Kongjian Yu/Peking University

Terreform is a nonprofit, urban research studio, and advocacy group. Founded in 2005 by Michael Sorkin, its mission is to investigate the forms, policies, technologies, and practices that will yield equitable, sustainable, and beautiful cities for our urbanizing planet. Terreform works as a "friend of the court," dedicated to raising urban expectations and to advocating innovative and progressive ideas as widely as possible. We undertake self-initiated investigations into both local and global issues, and make research and design available to community and other organizations to support independent environmental and planning initiatives.