The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA), a national award for urban places, was established in 1987 by the Bruner Foundation. The RBA discovers and celebrates urban places distinguished by quality design, and by their social, economic, and contextual contributions to the urban environment. The selection process involves mayors of major metropolitan areas and other experts in the urban built environment in honoring five urban places in each biennial award cycle.

The Loeb Fellowship Program, established in 1970 at the Harvard Design School, offers mid-career fellowships each year to 10 to 12 outstanding professionals working to improve the built and natural environment. Fellows are drawn from many professions including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design journalism, the arts and community development. Its founder, John Loeb, believed that a core group of committed professionals could have an impact far beyond their numbers on American cities.

The Bruner/Loeb Forum brings together RBA winners and Selection Committee members, Loeb fellows and alumnae, and distinguished practitioners from across the country to discuss the challenges facing our cities today and to present innovative solutions to those challenges. The Bruner Loeb Forum is an interactive program, designed to initiate and to foster a national dialogue on the most important issues facing our nation’s cities.

Two forums will be offered each year—one in Cambridge in the fall, and one in a different part of the country in the spring. During its 2 years, the Bruner/Loeb Forum explored the subject of Transforming Community Through the Arts, with events held in at the Harvard Design School, The Getty Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, and Chattanooga, TN.