Building beautiful: how Create Streets is on a mission to get Britain building better

Little provokes as much argument in the media, or in neighbourhood WhatsApp groups, as neighbourhood development. Often, it is framed as something to protest or complain about. But even if you do want to submit those complaints, the process often feels deliberately obtuse – a survey link buried on a back page of a local authority website, an article in a local paper with limited circulation, or a QR code to scan in a town hall that no one visits.

From their office in a refurbished Edwardian shop on Lambeth Walk, Create Streets aims to change all this. The tools they have developed to allow people to express their opinions about the communities they live in are intended to be easy to use and proactively engaging. In this way, they hope to change the narrative about development. Instead of a laminated notice cable-tied to a lamppost, asking for thoughts on a proposal by a nameless organisation, Create Streets sets up stalls at local farmers’ markets or Christmas fairs, at the heart of the communities whose towns they are working with, utilising both analogue and digital maps. “We’re asking people what they’d like to see, what they like and dislike, using a traffic light system that is very easy for everyone to comprehend,” says Lauren Botterill, an urban designer and project manager, as she shows us an example of their mapping tools, this one used for a development project in Lichfield.

As you would expect, planned developments near nature are hugely popular, but so are historic streets and pedestrianised areas – simply, people like the nice parts of town, where the natural world, pleasant amenities, beauty, and heritage are part of community life.

These mapping tools allow people to celebrate the good in their towns and what they like to see in their day-to-day lives. It changes development from a negative to a positive – encouraging developers to replicate the good, not build the bad.

“At the moment, the UK empowers people to reject development. The question is, how do we bring democracy forward into local planning, or on a state level?” Nicholas Boys Smith, founder of Create Streets, explains.

All of this goes into the creation of design codes – a pattern book for urban development. Each slim, ring-bound design code details what development should look like for that area, from the shades of slate for roofs to the designs of street furniture. There’s an element of no-nonsense practicality to it: telling developers not to waste money on designs that we know the public does not want. In a world where we see endless articles highlighting how multi-million-pound developments fail to meet the needs of their local area, it’s a useful tool.

All of this work turns development from an exercise in avoiding the negatives to one that celebrates the good and joy in a place. It provides communities, developers, and government a chance to build a shared vision.

It’s not just for that, though, as Ed Leahy, another urban designer, points out. It also gives Create Streets additional knowledge drawn from the practical wisdom of people in their everyday communities. “People tell you that ‘we like this spot because this is where we can go for a walk with our families, and we hate this spot because everyone almost gets hit by a car or something.’ You immediately generate quite a deep knowledge of the area you’re working in.”

This added knowledge gives their work a humanity, compared to two common elements of modern development, which Boys Smith points out – the idea of development being done by a nameless corporation, and local authorities signing off on development plans without living in the area they’re deciding on.

Although the team is quick to point out that their systems are not a panacea, but it is about providing tools that can be scaled and adapted. “We can honestly say in every one of the consultations we’ve run, you get pretty clear clustering of what people think.” It is here that the practical element of Create Streets’s work combines with the academic and explorative – the crux of Boys Smith’s curiosity about why we build what we build.

“What makes places work, I would argue, is consistent across time, culture, and politics. There will be practical differences in how it is interpreted, but people’s need for a place that feels homely, that’s enjoyable and safe to walk through, that looks nice, is essentially the same thing for a strong majority of us. There are differences of culture, but I think they’re secondary to our common humanity.”

Back in the practical world, we ask Boys Smith what he’d like to see change in planning in the UK. There are some entrenched issues he believes need tackling.

“To give you a very specific example, when the planning authority is at the district level and the Highways Authority is at the county level, that is an absolute recipe for conceptual and procedural screw-ups. You can literally have policies that contradict with no way to resolve them. That is a non-trivial conceptual problem with how we plan.” Hopefully, recently announced local government reform can resolve this problem. Removing risk is central to this. In addition to using design codes to remove the risk of a development being rejected by communities, Boys Smith suggests using predetermined materials or designs to guarantee pre-approval, moving away from a case-by-case basis to speed up development, much like the use of Cotswold stone in the Cotswolds. Pre-approval could speed up increasing density too. “I think the best way would be to relearn how streets used to intensify” he says.

By using a pre-approved design code for a neighbourhood, even just for a street, to approve additional storeys and increase density, is another of Create Streets’s proposed solutions. It doesn’t have to be done by everyone, but it would be a de-risked method. It would also allow homeowners to increase the value of their homes, even if they don’t build – knowing that a house can extend vertically would increase value, as well as local density.

“What was first built in this area of London was probably shorter than it is now. Certainly, in the City of London, or Westminster, or any town centre, buildings are quite a few storeys higher, almost certainly than they were when first built.”

And it’s not just the buildings. Create Streets is pushing for better use of the space around homes and amenities, helping develop ideas for greener streets and squares. One of their recent reports, Greening Up, shows how the government can support a new agenda on building better public space. The kind of thing that people notice in their everyday lives and value. And the kind of ordinary policies that matter to voters.

As we step out onto the street, I am reminded of the mosaic nature of this patch of South London—Georgian townhouses alongside medium-density post-war housing nestled against Victorian terraces. The quiet, messy mix of design captures the essence of British villages, towns, and cities - our communities are negotiations with the past, reflecting who we’ve been and who we are yet to become. In recent years, this negotiation has become entangled, layered with bureaucracy and a lack of shared belief in the possibility of what comes next.

To overcome these barriers and build more beautifully and on the scale needed, we’ll need new tools for this negotiation between the present and future of our places and their future. Create Streets is driven by a desire to create these new tools.

Be it researchers here at UCL or government officials, involving and engaging with them – and the movement they represent – will be vital for the long-term success of government missions on growth, opportunity, and housing.