Create Streets today publishes our manifesto for homes, hope and health. In it we suggest 16 key actions the next government should take for more homes, gentle density and ‘greening up’, for regenerative development, stronger towns and sustainable living patterns. They are:
Create homes in existing places so as to improve neighbourhoods
- ‘Bring the democracy forward’ and legalise new housing which people like.
- Legalise a new generation of mansion blocks.
- Ask the people what they like.
- Reinvent ‘box land’ for more homes.
- Put housing targets back into the system.
Improve existing places helping them become greener, safer to move through and more prosperous
- Let the people grow! Green up our streets and squares for healthier neighbourhoods and cleaner air.
- Build on our ‘road belt’ and restitch our left-behind towns.
- Move free. Stop highways departments from preventing beautiful streets and reducing housing delivery.
- Create civic and public buildings which elevate and don’t degrade their neighbourhoods.
Create homes more easily in beautiful and sustainable ‘gentle density’ new places
- Stop using obscure highways modelling mistakes to ban new homes, instead use vision-led transport modelling.
- Create new neighbourhoods and new towns at ‘gentle density.’
- Create trams.
- Create Greater Cambridge.
- Create beautiful and popular new homes and buildings on the grey belt.
And stop making things worse
- Don’t ban sash windows and large windows.
- Stop street scars.
Our Managing Director, David Milner, said, “We know there is massive support for gentle density, which delivers high numbers of housing between 3 and 7 storeys, yet in many areas this type of development is prevented by well intentioned building and planning regulations, leasehold structures and concerns on the changing character of neighbourhoods. All of which are having unintended negative outcomes on delivering gentle mid-rise homes.
Design codes are used extensively across the world. By investing small amounts of resource to set the pattern for development. Councils and developers can achieve massive returns in time saved going back and forward for every application, reducing the time needed for expensive consultants in the process and reducing development and legal risk for council’s and developers.”
You can read more about our manifesto in The Times’s analysis of housing and planning policy where it featured prominently.
Read the full document here.