Edward Hobson

Ed is an urban designer and planner with a passion to deliver beautiful, prosperous and resilient towns and cities. I have 20 years' experience of advising national and local policies, strategies and interventions to improve the design of the built environment through leading diverse teams of nationally respected experts.  

He spent over 5 years as Head of Place at the Design Council, where is oversaw the organisation’s infrastructure and built environment projects, such as their bespoke Design Academy at Network Rail. He also spent and a decade at CABE leading initiatives to expand the organisation’s remit. Notably he established the first national body, CABE Space, to take a strategic approach to green infrastructure and help raise the quality of parks and public spaces across the UK. He subsequently led the Sustainable Cities programme, corralling expertise to support UK cities’ design responses to climate change. He is a former Policy Director at Green Alliance, the environmental thinktank, where he oversaw advocacy and engagement with the Coalition Government on progressive energy, circular economy and land use policies across BEIS and Defra. 

Ed also worked at Innovate UK KTN, the UK’s innovation network, where as Head of Design & Innovation he delivered an unprecedented £6m of investment grants for early stage, human centred design to support companies across multiple industries, helping them to commercialised ideas to market through applying design thinking. 

He holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield in Values in Urban Design and Planning and has authored several publications. In his diminishing spare time, he runs around after his two boys, cycles and plays guitar, though not all at once.