The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) is a national urban design award that seeks to promote innovative thinking about the built environment and advance conversation about making cities better. The award discovers and celebrates urban places that are distinguished by quality design along with their social and economic contributions to our nation’s cities.
One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 are awarded each biennial. Winners are selected by a committee comprised of six urban experts, including a mayor. Each winner is documented with a detailed case study so that the ideas and lessons learned may be shared with others.
Explore the website to learn more about the award, selection process, past winners, and case studies.
ELIGIBILITY
- The project must be a real place, not just a plan or program.
- Since site visits are integral to the award process, the project must have been in operation for a sufficient amount of time to demonstrate success.
- The project must be located in the contiguous United States. It is not feasible to conduct site visits in Alaska or Hawaii.
- There are no distinct categories. Projects may include any type of place that makes a positive contribution to the urban built environment.
- Urban environment is broadly defined to include cities, towns, villages, neighborhoods, counties and/or regions.
- Previous applicants and Honorable Mention winners may apply up to three times. Previous winners are not eligible.
- Applicants from Oakland, CA are not eligible to submit this year. We look forward to receiving applications from Oakland in the future.
- The next award cycle is 2019. The Call for Entries will be announced on September 12, 2018.
- Submissions will be due by midnight EST on December 12, 2018.
- The five finalists will be notified in February 2019.
- Site visits to finalists will take place February-May 2019.
- The Gold and Silver Medal Winners will be selected and notified in June 2019.
- Presentations of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence will be made in Fall 2019.