CREATE streets exists to encourage the replacement of South London’s 1960s estates with conventional streets and squares, terraces and villas. Most people who can afford to do so choose to live in normal homes in normal streets. We exist to help CREATE neighbourhoods that give everyone this choice and everyone this sense of “place.” On the 24th January we launched our first full report. We have published this in conjunction with where it can be downloaded. A whole generation of misconceived 1960s housing estates ignored how people actually wanted to live. Poorly and cheaply designed and built, in less than a generation they have failed utterly. A mere forty years on, these estates have been, are being or will shortly be pulled down. This whole generation of estates are currently being re-built or re-planned. However, many of the plans being put forward have still comprehensively failed to learn from the disasters of the past. They remain overwhelmed by an urban framework that Londoners have rejected - cluttered slabs and tower blocks, urban walkways, large de-personalised apartment buildings and semi-private common spaces. There is no reason, commercially, environmentally or politically why the houses that replace the mistakes of the 1960s should not be as popular as the houses, streets and squares where generations of Londoners have chosen to live. CREATE streets has been set up to ensure that they are. CREATE streets encourages the redevelopment of London’s failed estates along radically different principles and to a pattern that works with the web and weave of natural preferences. We aim to give a voice to local residents, encourage urban designers to put forward sympathetic plans, developers to develop them and local councils and housing associations to commission them whilst encouraging support in the media or central government as necessary.

The Situation

The Problem

The Response