Create Streets

How Britain banned beautiful architecture England adores Georgian-style homes, but 'ugly' new builds are everywhere. What will be the fate of Labour's new towns?

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

Banning Beauty - Create Streets Download here

And read the full report on our website here www.createstreets.com/employees/ba...

How did we ban beauty by mistake? You can read our latest report Banning Beauty featured prominently in the
@telegraph.co.uk

What a happy looking home and garden. Observe the details & coherence which lifts the house from a wall with nine holes to something worth looking at.

As the days begin to get longer, the countdown to the Create Streets Foundation Urban Design and Architecture Summer School begins! Will you be joining us? ➡️https://createstreetsfoundation.org.uk/creating-places-academy/summer-school/ #summerschool #urbandesign #architecture

- Street Designer
- Policy Specialist (Transport and Urban Design)
View full role details here: createstreets.com/front-page-2...
- Policy Specialist (Create Streets Foundation)
View role here: createstreetsfoundation.org.uk/jobs/

We're growing the team!
Are you passionate about designing streets and places that people actually want to live in?
We're looking for talented people who care about creating beautiful, human-scale urban environments:

These are both train stations.

Trinity House, Trinity Square. 1941 and today. What is unmade may be remade.

Trinity House, Trinity Square. 1941 and today. What is unmade may be remade.

The Palace of Westminster is Falling Down. And other tales of architectural misadventure

Check out our director Nicholas Boys Smith MBE on The Critic Show last week talking about the construction and restoration of the Palace of Westminster. You can watch it here www.outpoststudios.net/p/the-palace...

Of Streets and Squares

Sure! Check out Of Streets and Squares - page 32 onwards issuu.com/cadoganlondo...

The best streets have enclosure & variety in a pattern.

Struggling to think of a Christmas present for the urbanists & artists in your life? Check out the upcoming Create Streets Foundation short courses!
Gentle Density Masterclass - www.createstreetsfoundation.org.uk/creating_gen...
Dare to Draw - www.createstreetsfoundation.org.uk/dare-to-draw/

This slice of Paris is new. Every mote of it. New homes & places don't need to be loveless. We chose to create ugly places because we don't ask: is this humane? Is this lovely? Is this kind? But we can afford to. If we dare to slip the surly bonds. Read more - www.createstreets.com/projects/com...

Public overwhelmingly prefer traditional design for new Christ’s College library - Create Streets A new poll of over 2,000 members of the British public has shown overwhelming support for a traditionally styled design for the […]

You can read the full survey results and alternative design here 👇

www.createstreets.com/projects/pub...

The results? As with every Visual Preference Survey, it was clear.
📊 71% of respondents preferred the traditional alternative
📉 Only 21% chose the official design
🧍‍♂️ 8% weren’t sure

This was a national sample. Not just local residents. Support was 100% consistent across income, gender and politics

We tested two designs for Christ’s Lane:
A. The official assertive proposal by Christ's College
B. A contextual alternative, developed by Create Streets designed to respond to the patterns that most people find more humane, reassuring & pleasing

CAMBRIDGE: New data. Clear preferences. The public want buildings that fit in, not stick out.

A new poll by DeltapollUK Create Streets finds 71% of Britons prefer a traditional alternative to the current design for the Christ’s College library.

California Forever’s New City - Create Streets In economic terms, architectural beauty is a classic example of a positive externality. The owner of a building must bear all the […]

You can read @scp-hughes.bsky.social full blog here: createstreets.com/california-f... (~5 minute read) & join the conversation: how can we apply this model in the UK, with local conditions, smaller scale & tighter constraints?

At Create Streets we believe in structured, attractive, walkable places with real character. California Forever demonstrates that even today, one landowner + one vision + good infrastructure can lead to better outcomes. Policy can learn from this...

Yes, the context in California is special: near the Bay Area, tons of investment, huge scale. But the underlying logic can apply in 🇬🇧: less about scale, more about ownership & ambition in planning the whole rather than just parts...

Why does this matter for the UK? Because the UK still struggles with fragmented land ownership and ad-hoc development. A single-owner or coordinated approach offers a way to “internalise the externalities” and build places that look & feel coherent, not just functional...

... California Forever's new city is different. On one large site, it’s planning a gridded street network, perimeter-block urbanism, mingled uses, heavy industry segregated yet connected, segregated cycling lanes, transit-oriented layout & a strong design code rooted in local vernaculars.

Most modern British development happens in small parcels. That means each landowner focuses on their own plot & has little incentive to invest in shared infrastructure (streets, parks, drainage, public transport). The wider public goods get short-changed.

Historically, large landowners and “Great Estates”, solved this by internalising the externalities: they built networks of streets, parks & buildings in a unified way so the value of the whole increased: John Wood in Bath, Bedford Park or Mayfair in London, Le Vésinet in Paris...

... in our latest blog, Create Streets fellow @scp-hughes.bsky.social explains how beauty in architecture and urbanism is a classic positive externality: the owner pays for it, but everyone benefits. Because markets don’t reward that benefit directly, beauty tends to be undersupplied...

Is this best news for city creation for over a century? In Solano County, California (California Forever) is attempting something fascinating: a unified-landowner model to build what might become “the finest piece of urbanism at that scale” for over 100 years .... 🧵

...also saved by Historic England is the C17th Old School Coffee House, in Barnstaple, Devon, founded as a school for ‘20 poor maids’ in 1659, it is now transformed into affordable homes. The perfect example that we don't space, we need place. The greenest building already exists