‘What stops us from creating beautiful places?’ – Dr Wei Yang OBE
Posted on: 3 July, 2026
By Linda Serck
Speaking at the University of the Built Environment’s summer 2026 graduation, Dr Wei Yang OBE urged graduates to carry their curiosity into the next stage of their careers, reminding them that the future of the built environment depends not only on technical expertise, but on the courage to ask better questions.
For Dr Wei Yang OBE, the question that inspired her career was simple: why do we keep making the same mistakes in the places we build?
The internationally recognised town planner and urban designer told graduates at Reading Concert Hall on Friday 3 July she had seen “places of beauty, hope, and possibility” but also deprived communities, car-dominated neighbourhoods, polluted rivers and lost natural and cultural heritage. Those experiences made her ask: “What stops us from creating beautiful places where people, nature, and society can coexist in harmony?”
Wei, who was awarded an honorary doctorate by UCEM, now University of the Built Environment, in 2025, is Chair of Wei Yang & Partners and co-founder and CEO of the Digital Task Force for Planning. A former President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) and former Chair of the Construction Industry Council (CIC), she has spent her career arguing for a more human, more thoughtful and more joined-up approach to planning and place-making, one that reconnects people with nature and asks how the built environment can serve society, landscape and future generations.
Questions about planning, people and nature
Her question drew her back to the origins of the planning profession and, in particular, the garden city movement. In 2011, she formed her own practice to develop and apply the idea of 21st-century garden cities, adapting the principles of that movement for a very different age.
Since then, she has led large-scale masterplans and spoken to mayors, politicians, planners and built environment professionals around the world. Yet the more she worked at the highest levels of planning, the more aware she became of the sector’s biggest problems: “In a fast-changing, technological and profit-driven world, many problems are not technical,” she said. “They are rooted in losing sight of purpose and failing to follow the right principles.”
The built environment needs moral judgement
That belief has guided much of Wei’s work. She told graduates that planning and built environment professionals need to think beyond professional boundaries and beyond the present day, asking who they serve, how they relate to nature and society, and how they can look beyond short-term self-interest.
She said: “So, for whom do we plan? What is our relationship with nature and society? How can we, as human beings, look beyond short-term self-interest and consider the longer-term interests of humanity and the planet?”
Wei argued that the sector needs transformative change: to reconnect with nature, rethink urban prosperity, redefine beauty and re-engage with technology. That change, she suggested, begins with our own attitudes.
“It is hard to change another person’s mind,” she said, “but sometimes the hardest thing is to change our own mindset.”
AI and the built environment
For our 2026 graduates, that challenge now comes with a new urgency, she said. Artificial intelligence is already changing the way professionals work, promising faster analysis, quicker options and more efficient decision-making. Wei did not dismiss that potential, but she was clear about its limits.
“AI will transform many aspects of our work and life,” she said. “It will analyse information, generate options, and give us answers at extraordinary speed. However, it cannot replace our moral judgement, and it cannot decide what kind of society we want to build. That responsibility remains ours.”
Being part of the solution
The built environment shapes daily life, health and wellbeing, but it is also one of the biggest contributors to the environmental crisis.
Wei reminded graduates that the sector contributes around 40% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, over a third of global final energy use and consumes nearly half of the world’s natural resources.
“We should not be part of the problem,” she said. “We should be part of the solution.”
That means continuing to ask difficult questions, even when projects are under pressure, budgets are tight and the convenient answer is already on the table.
She asked: “What problem are we really trying to solve? Who is missing from the conversation? What assumptions are hidden in our models and decisions? What will today’s decision mean for future generations? How do we create places that are not only efficient and profitable, but also beautiful, inclusive, healthy, and kind?”
Carry curiosity into your career
Wei’s message to graduates is to believe in themselves, keep asking questions and do not allow professional boundaries, inherited assumptions or the pace of technological change to narrow their sense of what is possible.
“There is no age and gender difference in our spirit, and no race difference in our soul,” she said. “No matter who you are, have the courage to ask questions. That is where a better future begins.”
