Congratulations to Matthew Carmona who has been awarded the Best Published Paper Award by the Association of European Schools of Planning for his  paper ‘The formal and informal tools of design governance’.

The paper takes a typological exploration of the ‘tools’ of ‘design governance’. It begins by exploring the generic literature that focuses on the range of instruments, approaches and actions ‒ the tools ‒ that policy makers deploy in order to steer public and private actors towards particular policy outcomes. Subsequently, how the notion of tools relates to practices of design governance is examined: first, encompassing three ‘formal’ categories of design governance tools ‒ guidance, incentive and control ‒ and second, by drawing on the work of the former Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in England to introduce five categories of ‘informal’ design governance tools ‒ evidence, knowledge, promotion, evaluation and assistance. The result, and the key contribution of this paper, is a new and comprehensive (albeit evolving), design governance toolbox that extends from formal to informal tools and far beyond that which most policy makers recognise or use.