Dr Lucy Montague is widely considered a leading authority on high streets. Known for her influential book High Street: How Our Town Centres Can Bounce Back from the Retail Crisis, co-authored with practitioners David Rudlin (Director of Urbanism at Building Design Partnership) and Vicky Payne (Jas Bhalla Architects) and for the groundbreaking research project Tales from the High Street, funded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851’s £100k Built Environment Fellowship. The book was shortlisted for the Architectural Book of the Year awards 2024 and is in the Royal Institute of British Architect’s top ten selling titles. Her research has made major, novel contributions to our understanding of UK high streets and the crisis in retail which has decimated town centres across the country.

In 2024 she was appointed Parliamentary Special Advisor to the House of Lords Built Environment Select Committee for their inquiry into the future of high streets, culminating in the report High Streets: Life Beyond Retail?. Dr Montague is an active advocate for policy reform to support high street recovery, speaking at both Labour and Conservative Party conferences, and has been cited in parliamentary debate. Her work has received widespread media attention, with appearances on national TV, radio, and in leading newspapers. As a Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture, she also delivers expert education and training in urban regeneration, shaping policy and practice across sectors.

In 2019, Lucy established an innovative model for collaboration, with world-renowned industry partner URBED and the School of Architecture forming URBED+ as a vehicle for research, advocacy, education and public engagement in urban issues. Their projects cover a wide range of urban issues from housing and neighbourhood scale retrofit, to planning policy and the community participation, attracting funding and collaboration from public and private sector partners as well as research councils.

Having spent the last decade working internationally on methodological approaches to integrate practice within research processes and criteria, Lucy is also lead the strategic creation of an MSA model for practice-based research and managed the School’s practice-based research outputs for REF2021.

Academic and professional qualifications

  • FHEA Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching & Learning in Higher & Professional Education (The Institure of Education)
  • PhD (Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh)
  • MSc Urban Design with distinction (Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh)
  • PG Dip Architecture & Urbanism with distinction ARB Part II (Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh)
  • BArch (Hons) 1st Class ARB Part I (Edinburgh College of Art, Heriot Watt University)

Academic service (administration and management)

Programme Director of the MA Architecture & Urbanism

Founder and Academic Lead of URBED+

Postgraduate teaching

MA Architecture & Urbanism

Postgraduate supervision

PhD candidate Hannah Dixon: Retrofit at an Urban Scale

Research

Books

Montague, L.M., Rudlin, D., 2025. 'Desire Lines: How the way we draw affects the cities we build', Routledge, New York.

RUDLIN D., PAYNE, V., MONTAGUE, L., , 2023. 'HIGH STREET How Our Town Centres Can Bounce Back from the Retail Crisis', RIBA Publishing.

Book Chapters

Montague, L.M., 2016. 'Theory's Role in Placelessness'. In Freestone, R., Liu, E. (eds.) Place and Placelessness Revisited, pp. 49-60, Routledge, New York.

Reports

Montague, L., 2026. 'Placemaking Not Plotting: Towards a new generation of sustainable suburbs'.

Committee, H.O.L.B.E.S., 2024. 'High Streets: Life Beyond Retail?'.

Montague, L.M., 2014. 'Review of the Master of Urban Design, RMIT Melbourne'.

Montague, L.M., Forsyth, W.L., Fraser, D., 2011. 'Review of the Scottish Government's Charette Mainstreaming Programme: Johnstone South-West'.

Journal Articles

Montague, L., 2026. 'Flexible Futures: Designing High Streets for the Crises to Come', Architecture, 6 (2).

Non-Peer Reviewed Articles

Montague, L.M., 2017. 'Square Pegs and Round Holes: Integrating the unpredictability of community engagement with the slow-moving machine of academia', The Academy of Urbanism Journal.

Conference Papers

Montague, L.M., 2016. 'Representational Practices in Urban Design', Eleventh International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, George Brown College, Toronto Canada, 2/3/2017 - 4/3/2017.

Montague, L.M., Powell, A., Swindells, S., 2015. 'Cultural Economics: Relating Urban Design, Art and Civic Society as a Platform for Creative Consultation', 2nd International Conference on "Changing Cities II: spatial, design, landscape & socio-economic dimensions, Porto Heli, Greece, 22/6/2015 - 26/6/2015, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Changing Cities II: Spatial, Design, Landscape & Socio?economic dimensions.

Montague, L.M., 2015. 'Designing the Urban: Reflections on the role of theory in the individual design process', Fourth International Conference on Architectural Research by Design, Lusofona University, Lisbon, 8/5/2014 - 9/5/2014.

Montague, L.M., Powell, A., Swindells, S., 2015. 'Exploring Place and Public Memory: Huddersfield and the Regional North', Contemphoto '15: Urban Identities, 2nd International Contemporary Photography Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, 9/6/2015 - 10/6/2015, in Contemphoto '15: Urban Identities.

Montague, L.M., Powell, A., Swindells, S., 2015. 'The Civic Role of the University in Post-Industrial Towns: Public Memory, Urban Identities and Creative Consultation', The Urban University Conference: Universities as place makers and agents of civic success, The Collaborative Centre for the Built Environment (CCBE), The University of Northampton, Northampton, 2/7/2015 - 3/7/2015.

Montague, L.M., 2013. 'Reflective Practice in Urban Design', Knowing (by) Designing, Brussels, Belgium, 22/5/2013 - 23/5/2013, in LUCA Departement Architectuur Sint-Lucas.

Theses and Dissertations

Montague, L.M., 2014. 'Designing the Urban: The role of theory in the individual creative process'.