Founded in 1995, the City Design Center is a multi-disciplinary research, education, and service program in the College of Architecture and the Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Center’s mission is the study and practice of design in the public interest. The Center’s work is founded on the idea that the quality of the built urban environment – from the fixtures, furnishings, and buildings that house them, to the streets, plazas and parks that surround them, to the resulting spatial form of the overall community – is intrinsic to the vitality and diversity of the city’s cultural, economic, and political life. To meet this challenge, the Center develops and advocates for innovative and effective design research and practices by providing information to improve the quality of design decisions.