Dr Wei Yang

Dr Wei Yang is an internationally renowned town planner and urban designer. She is Chair of Wei Yang & Partners - an award-winning master planning firm in London. Wei was President for 2021 of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). She champions a digitally enabled place-based whole systems approach to tackle the grand challenges of our times, and thus to achieve collective wellbeing and fulfilment for all.

Wei is a lead figure in researching, promoting, and implementing 21st Century Garden City and green & low-carbon development approach worldwide. She is co-author of a bestselling book, Humanistic Pure Land and Garden Cities (Shi & Yang, 2021).

Passionate about modernising the planning profession in the digital age, Wei is co-founder and co-chair of the Digital Task Force for Planning and co-author of A Digital Future for Planning – Spatial Planning Reimagined (Batty & Yang, 2022) which outlines blueprint for digital transformation of spatial planning and the sector’s future.

Wei builds a bridge between research, development and policy. She is a Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the RTPI, a Member of Chartered Institute of Highway and Transportation (CHIT), a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Client Advisor, and an Honorary Professor at UCL.

Wei also holds a number of board-level and advisory roles across different sectors. She is a board member of the British Library, Global Planners Network’s representative at the UN Habitat Professional Forum, and UN Habitat World Urban Campaign Steering Committee member representing Professionals Partner Constituency Group. Recently, Wei was elected as the Deputy Chair of the UK Construction Industry Council (CIC). She will be CIC’s first female Chair in 2023.