University College London was founded in 1826 to open up university education in England to those who had been excluded from it. In 1878, it became the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms with men.
Academic excellence and conducting research that addresses real-world problems inform our ethos to this day and our plans for the future. This approach cuts across a vast variety of centres of excellence in urban research at UCL, including the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment (which houses amongst others the Development Planning Unit, DPU), the UCL Urban Lab, the departments of Geography and of Civil Engineering, and the City Leadership Initiative.
