CREATE STREETS; TALK WITH NICHOLAS BOYS SMITH

Create Streets is a social enterprise that encourages the creation of more urban homes in conventional, terraced streets rather than complex multi-storey buildings as well as greater, constructive, public influence on the planning and development system. They do this through research, arguing for policy change, and consulting to councils, developers, communities and landowners. According to Sir Simon Jenkins, former Chair of the National Trust, ‘Create Streets speaks London’s language.’

Create Streets’ core argument is that more conventional development: would be more popular, thus reducing resistance to new development; is provably better correlated with good wellbeing outcomes; can easily provide the density we need to solve the housing crisis; and is actually a better long-term investment. They also believe that the UK planning system is fundamentally mis-designed being both too complex and unpredictable but also systemically failing to mediate between what gets built and what people actually like in the built environment.