Determinants of performance of UK universities in Built Environment and Town and Country Planning research

After providing a brief review of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) of UK universities in the subject areas of Built Environment and Town and Country Planning, four measures are developed to represent the range of activities considered by the exercise. These have simple and strong relationships with the grades awarded to the universities. The findings suggest that the assessment method was broad and robust and that good grades were achieved through quite different activity profiles. Issues are raised about the general level of research activity and the small and static number of international‐level departments in the UK.