Hastings resident, Dr Graeme Davis, reflects on his recent attempts to create a new home… If Hastings Town Council had not demolished the heart of Old Town Hastings it would probably now be a World Heritage Site. Slum clearance in the 1930s allowed the Council to buy, at minimal cost, 191 old houses in the […]
Our director, Nicholas Boys Smith’s defence of fifteen minute cities was recently published in Conservative Home. The text was edited down for reasons of space. Here is the full text. Would you like to live in a more prosperous place? A neighbourhood where there are more local businesses, where shops do better, where the air […]
Toby Lloyd, Create Streets fellow, considers an option for intensification of inter war housing estates. Finding a way to add new homes into low density suburbs has long been a holy grail of housing and planning policy. Lacking a decent model for suburban densification we are instead forced to fight ever more acrimonious planning battles […]
Transport for New Homes, an organisation that advocates for creating new homes designed around walking, cycling and public transport, have released a scathing report on the state of new housing developments in England declaring most unfit in our quest towards carbon net zero. It was not hugely surprising that most of the brownfield housing sites […]
Create Streets head of research Ben Southwood explains how agglomeration is the key to economic success, and why this means that more gentle density in the UK can help us Most value in the world today is created by people working together. Natural resources like oil, or agricultural land, are still responsible for a substantial […]
The architect, Robert Adam, reflects on a recent new housing planning application and why we need to ‘move the democracy forward’ I firmly believe that if we were to make more use of popular visual design codes within local plans for the ‘the type of development we like round here’ it would both make it […]
Over many years during my long housebuilding career, planners and local residents have often screamed for a mixed use content within new housing developments. Not a real surprise as we all recognise its contribution in society and its convenience particularly if its a general store and after all new purchasers of our beautiful houses for […]
Pick up any article about the Government’s views on planning and you’ll find it hard to miss an emphasis on “beauty”, “gentle density” and “community engagement”. As with all public policy the acid test lies in its delivery. This is the story of the first test of “gentle density” in London. Benedict Wharf has been […]
‘Moving on, moving better?’ Rachael Unsworth questioned in last week’s blog post, considering what cities can learn from the current crisis. With our present lives on hold it also brings about the time and opportunity to rethink our future, and the way that we design and live in our cities. City-makers from everywhere are responding […]
Far too many political commentators assume that state intervention in land use decisions ‘started’ with the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, and is mainly about the green belt preventing urban expansion.