Examination of local folding and H-bonding patterns in model compounds can be extremely informative to gain insight into the propensity of longer-chain oligomers to adopt specific folding patterns (i.e. foldamers) based on remote interactions. Using a combination of experimental techniques (i.e. X-ray diffraction, FT-IR absorption and NMR spectroscopy) and theoretical calculations at the density functional theory (DFT) level, we have examined the local folding patterns induced by the urea fragment in short-chain aza analogues of beta- and gamma-amino acid derivatives. We found that the urea-turn, a robust C(8) conformation based on 1