YANG Wei

Chairman of Wei Yang & Partners, Vice President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences

Dr Wei Yang is a renowned Chinese-British town planner and urban designer. She is the founder of Wei Yang & Partners, an award-winning master planning firm in London.

Currently, Wei is the Vice President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) in the UK and will lead the Institute as President in 2021. Founded in 1914, the RTPI is the principal body representing planning professionals in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Wei is also an Independent Trustee of the UK Landscape Institute and a Board Trustee of Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre. In May 2019, she was appointed as a Board Member of the British Library by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

Professionally, Wei is a lead figure in researching, promoting and implementing the 21st Century Garden City approach and promoting joined up thinking between different built environment professionals. She has extensive experience in managing multi-disciplinary teams. Her professional strengths lie in combining innovative planning inspirations with feasible implementation solutions. Due to her significant contribution, she was conferred as a Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) in 2017.

Wei is also a key figure in promoting green & low-carbon development approach in China. From 2013 to 2016, she served as the Co-chair of the UK-China Eco-Cities & Green Building Group. Between 2013 and 2014, she was seconded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as British Principal Planning Expert to advise the Chinese Ministry of Housing & Urban-Rural Development (MoHURD) on sustainable urbanisation. From 2015 to 2017, she led the UK-China pilot project on ‘the Green & Low-Carbon Development of Small Towns in China’, and was the lead author of The Technical Manual for Green & Low-Carbon Development of Small Towns in China.