Robert Cowan

After working in housing research at the Planning Exchange in Glasgow and planning aid at the Town and Country Planning Association in London, Rob Cowan turned to journalism as editor of the TCPA's journal Town and Country Planning in 1982, editor of Roof (the magazine of the housing charity Shelter) from 1983 and at the Architects' Journal in various roles, including as acting editor in 1990. From 2000 to 2007 Cowan was the first director of the Urban Design Group and since 2007 he has been a director of the consultancy UDS Planning (formerly Urban Design Skills). He was the joint author of the government’s first urban design guidance, By Design: urban design in the planning system (2000). He has originated three influential urban design methods: the Placecheck method of urban design audit (now a web app that he runs with the architect and software developer Chris Sharpe); the skills appraisal method Capacitycheck (which now provides the criteria for the Urban Design Group's recognised practitioner membership category); and the design appraisal method Qualityreviewer. He has been a senior research fellow in the Department of Architecture, De Montfort University (1995–2003); an external examiner in town planning at the Bartlett School, UCL (2001–03); an external examiner in town planning at the University of Manchester (2002–05); and a teaching fellow (urban design) at the Bartlett School, UCL (2004–06). He was a corporate member of the Royal Town Planning Institute from 1999 to 2023. Cowan began working on urban lexicography in 2000. The first edition of his acclaimed The Dictionary of Urbanism was published in 2005, and he has been updating and expanding it ever since. The second edition will be illustrated and have more than 12,000 entries.

In 1973 Cowan founded the Wyndham Lewis Society, devoted to the modernist writer and painter. The society publishes the Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies and the Lewisletter. Cowan was chairman (1990–92) and a trustee (1992–99) of Vision for London. He has been editor of Context, the journal of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation, since 2000. He was an assessor for the Scottish student urban design awards (2002–05) and a special advisor to the House of Commons ODPM Committee (2004). He was a board member of the Nordic Urban Design Association from 2006 to 2014, and he chaired its first four annual conferences in Norway. Since 2006 Cowan has been a trustee (and secretary from 2006 to 2025) of the Lady Margaret Paterson Osborn Trust (set up by the family of the town planning pioneer Sir Frederic Osborn). He gave the Royal Town Planning Institute's masterclasses on urban design for many years. He was The Planners cartoonist for 20 years, and his cartoons have been published in Context and the Architects' Journal. He presents the Plandemonium series of online cartoon videos. He has been a member of the judging panel for the Civic Voice Design Awards since 2015.