Works in Progress Podcast

Hello, welcome to the Works in
Progress podcast. My name's Sam Bowman.

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Our guest today is Nicholas Boys Smith.

Nicholas is the chairman of a
group called Create Streets.

And I think many people may have
encountered him indirectly because I think

of him as the inventor of
the term gentle density.

And the work Nicholas does is about
trying to turn urban areas into much more

livable human-centric places and
to draw from empirical evidence and

draw from experience and draw from history
to learn what kind of cities are the

nicest and most productive
cities to live in. Nicholas,

do you think that's a fair description
of what Create Streets does?

A very good description, probably
better than I could come up with.

I don't know if I coined
the term gentle density.

I've certainly popularised this and got
it into the English planning system.

I have a vague sense,

I probably read it somewhere and
filched it without realising.

What we mean by gentle density is the
type of place which has the advantages of

personal space of control,
of your own environment,

but also the advantages of propinquity
of proximity to neighbours,

shops, places to work, enough
density to support a local shop,

a pub or a bar or a bus
or a tram or a train. And

often, not always often a
gentle density type development.

Think terrace houses, think mansion
blocks, think of Village Green.

Think of town square will optimise those
trade-offs for many people much of the

time. So yes, we are often about

encouraging or discouraging
super density and encouraging

gentle density and discouraging
thoughtless sprawl of 20
or 30 homes a hectare.

So we're trying to help more
places get to that trade off,

which we think is better
for the environment,

better for the people living there and
actually better for productivity because

that then encourages
agglomeration effects.

Just so that the listeners can get a
sense of the places you're talking about,

what's an example of a good, in your mind,

of well either planned or not planned,
but a well ordered urban area?

What's an example of a bad
one? A super density one,

and what's an example of the
sprawl that you don't like?

It's not a question whether I like or not.

It's a question whether
it works optimally. Well.

The one area that was always
in my head when I started,

I'm not saying it's the perfect example,

is neighbourhood in central
London called Pimlico,

which was built in the mid 19th
century. It's about a hundred seventy,

a hundred seventy five homes per
hectare. It's a great place to live.

It's got modest gardens,
terrace houses, mansion blocks,

quite a tight network of streets.

It's quite a European version
of a London neighbourhood.

You wouldn't have those
everywhere. That's a pretty good,

good way of optimising.

A bad example of super density
would be a new development

in central London called Nine Elms,

where they've taken a previously
industrial site along the

southern side of central of the Thames
and put a series of tower blocks.

Towers have a place but they're at sort
of funny angles to the river to maximise

the number of windows that have a view
of the river. I get why they did that,

but it's also created
very windy corridors,

unpleasant public places and actually
doesn't probably even optimise the density

from the site.

The wind is crazy in Nine Elms. It's
really noticeable as you walk through it.

And this stuff ... no
surprises. So this stuff we've,

we've understood the stuff for 40
years. Tall buildings create more wind.

Now sometimes that's fine. If you
are in Dubai or in a very hot place,

you may be grateful for that.

In a temperate climate such
as London on the whole fast

winds are bad, make us less comfortable.

We do walking tours for some of our
donors and clients and we always stop them

at St.

James Street where you get The Economist
tower because suddenly the microclimate

is less pleasant.

It's always slightly colder there and
there's always a wind effect. Now,

on a warm day in central
London in the middle of summer,

you might be grateful for that.
Most of the year you won't be,

you also asked bad examples of sprawl
and should preface this by saying and

sprawl an American American term,

obviously a detached house is
a good thing. Detached house

tends to create an environment,
a back garden and a front garden.

Lots of space for the
people who live there.

When you ask people what's
their preferred form of housing,

about 69% in the UK and similar
ratios elsewhere in Europe would

say that their preferred performance is
detached or family houses as you'd say

in America. There are lots of good
things about the detached house,

about the family house. We shouldn't
criticise them existentially.

They give you lots of
house, they give you garden,

they give control of your
immediate environment,

which is why people say they like
them. But there are trade offs as well.

So when you then look at the revealed
pricing of land values both per hectare

and per square foot, you find
that when you do well-planned,

well-designed gentle density,

you are getting most of the advantages
of lower density. Getting your own house,

you're getting your own garden. You might
be getting a slightly smaller house,

you might be getting a
slightly smaller garden.

I live in a detached in a terrace
house and we get a garden,

but not as much as I would if I
lived out in the far outer suburbs.

But you then get other advantages as well.

You probably get proximity to a school,

you probably get greater
proximity to local shops.

You probably get greater proximity to a
bus or a train that can get you to work

because the high density
makes that affordable.

So you're getting those trade-offs.

This is the case for gentle
density between the advantages
of private space and

the advantages of propinquity.
That's the trick of gentle density.

It's not perfect. Nothing
in this world is perfect,

but you are more likely to optimise for
more people much of the time in terms of

bad sprawl,

you could point at almost anything done
outside London and Manchester and a few

other cities in the UK in the last 20
years. One that just jumps to mind because

it's just so ridiculous. Ebbsfleet,
which is a major new development,

close to a train line or on a
train line in an old quarry,

they're finally getting around
to doing the new town centre.

Now they've already done the
housing a bit further out

within a few hundred yards of what should
be the town centre, the train station.

You are down into two story
detached or semi-detached houses,

wide roads, huge splay junctions,

very inefficient land use when you are
about 90 seconds walk from the station.

That's a particularly egregious example
of sprawl because it's precisely where

you shouldn't have sprawl.

I mean there is a case to having lower
density further out because you are

making a different trade off between
proximity to work and personal space.

When you are a few hundred yards
from a major train junction,

you shouldn't be building that.

And of course in London we got actually
quite a lot of that either with a

functional history or of
bombing or whatever it might be.

It's funny you mentioned Pimlico,
just a personal anecdote.

When I came to London when I
was 15 on my first solo trip

away from Cork, which is where
I grew up, I wander around ...

Lovely gentle density in Cork.

Well, I wandered around the city,

I wandered around London basically all
day every day for a week and came to

Pimlico and I was completely blown away
by how beautiful and lovely it was.

And I remember texting the girl I was
going out with at the time saying,

I really hope I can
live in Pimlico someday.

I really love Pimlico and I've
never ended up living there.

I live pretty close now,
but it is a really, really
wonderful part of the world.

And it's interesting to see how it was
built. So it was built under strict

regulation by the landowner following
the London Metropolitan building acts.

So it was part historically of the
groner estate. It isn't anymore.

It got sold off to manage death
duties in the 20th century.

This isn't a comment on land
ownership patterns by the way,

but so it was built by a master.
It's hard to put a word for it ...

developer/contractor/architect/
Master ceremoniwa.

He;s a chap called Thomas Cubitt
who, if you haven't heard of him,

definitely worth a
Google. Fascinating man.

But he built the whole thing out using
a pattern book of quite simple house

types. If you actually, again,

worth bringing up on screen or
Googling what it looks like,

they're just sort of mid
19th century italianate.

They're all covered in stucco
columns in front of the doors,

couple of steps up range of three
or four window types, that's it.

But you get that variety in a pattern at
quite high density but not overwhelming

density.

So you said a few things there
that I want to unpack a little bit.

So what's a pattern book?

So a pattern book sometimes also known
as a design code is essentially a set of

pre-done designs for
whatever you want in a

town or village or city. It
might be a street design,

it might be material types,
it might be window design.

Typically it's what's public and I
think it's quite important philosophical

difference between the public realm
and the public side of the house or a

building and what you do inside.

I mean my personal view would be what
you do inside is up to you as long you

don't break the law or hurt anyone,

but actually if you're building in the
street, if you're creating a street,

you are not creating something private.

You are by definition creating something
public. And that's why on the whole,

and so this is going beyond
your question, the state,

whether you like it or not,

has tended to get involved in that and
has often ended up defining versions of

what I'm for present
purposes calling a pattern.

But you wanted to ask
something else as well?

Well, in this case it wasn't the State,

as you were saying it
was the Grosvenor estate,

but they kind of acted in
the function of the State.

Yeah, so the Grosvenor estate,

and I wouldn't want to give too much
detail because I might get it wrong,

but the Grosvenor estate certainly
did more than the London Metropolitan

Building Acts required.

But the London Metropolitan building acts
like the previous London building Acts

in the 18th and late 17th
centuries essentially created a

defacto partial pattern book because
they set some stipulations for materials

and distances and building sizes.

It's really interesting because when I
talk about design codes in the context of

changing planning and zoning rules,
now people often find them quite alien.

The idea that there would be a bunch of
rules about the way a thing you build

can look, we're used
to rules about safety,

but we're not so used
to rules about designs.

But the way you are describing it
sounds like this used to be the norm.

It was the norm.

And the the reason why anyone who's
even vaguely historically interested can

walk around, we're in London
so let's keep with London,

and normally data building with reasonable
chance of getting it roughly right.

You basically can tell the difference
between the 19th century and 18th century

building or a 20th century building.
Yes, there's architectural fashion,

but it's largely because following the
regulations and the codes that were

required at the time,

once you get past about 1780 following
the 1778 London Building Act,

all of the windows have set in more and
you don't have wooden frames other than

the actual mulian and transom bars
because it was banned in regulation.

So it does follow that. And just on

the principle of coding and setting the
way I would always, I think put it is

use codes and pattern books to make
it easy, but don't necessarily,

other than for some fundamental things,
don't necessarily ban other things. Just

encourage people to do the good ordinary.
You do the good ordinary follow the

pattern book, essentially you're
pre-approved off you go, no risk,

just go to the bank, get the debt you
need to build the thing and off you go.

If you want to do something bigger and
weirder or uglier or more beautiful or

whatever, ten times the heights with
glass and bits of funny angles coming up,

that's fine.

The planning system's over there and we
can get into the planning system in more

detail. Take your chances, you may get
a no, but we're not going to ban you,

but you just need to be aware you're going
to be taking a greater level of risk.

So it's less about
increasing risk for stuff,

it's more about de-risking things
that fit a reasonable lowest common

denominator that most people
most of the time will accept.

So I have a small question
and I have a big question.

I'm going to ask the small question first,

which is that you mentioned
variety in a pattern.

What are you thinking of when you say
variety in a pattern as this desirable

feature?

Something we haven't got to but we
might is about the evidence about the

types of places that people like and why,

which I think is a fascinating subject,

which is really opening up at the moment
and it's possible to talk about it now

with more confidence than even 20
years ago. But by variety in a pattern,

what I mean is as you walk down a street,

there is a pattern of repetition.
It might be the same bay width,

it might be a similar colour range,
it might be a range of window types.

So there's some coherence and structure
and repetition, yes, if you like,

you'd make the analogy to a poem,

it's the rhyme scheme to
the poem or perhaps the semi
rhymes that go between the

different lines. It's the structure of
the sonet, but there's also a difference.

It's not as if a sonet,

it's just the same line or two
lines repeated multiple times.

So you've got a different

head to a column there or you've got a
different fan light there or suddenly

you've got a slightly different
window. So you've get variety,

you get little surprises, but they're
within that overall framework.

And the emerging neuroscience of how
we respond to places would I think

encourage us to believe, I don't
think we've completely proven it yet,

that most of us find that pleasant
surprises within a coherent framework,

a more readable and enjoyable place to be.

I've experienced this too, by the way.

So actually I consider myself to
have slightly repetitious leaning

preferences. So when I go to, there's
that street in the central Paris,

Rue de Rivoli, I think
I dunno,

70 bay long building that's
identical bay 70 times.

And I see a building like that,
I'm like, that looks really great.

And I think I saw a building today in
Chicago called the State Mercantile

Exchange or something like that.
Biggest building in the world,

4 million square foot
takes up several blocks.

At the time, not now.

At the time,

but for a long time and not the tallest
but the biggest in terms of total amount

of square footage has its
own zip code until 2008.

I just don't want the Romanian
Palace of Parliament to

lose its title.

But everyone I meet disagrees with me,

especially American and English
people or British people,

and think that the American main Street
or the British Village Street where you

have a three story building next to a
two story building and everything's a bit

higgledy piggly and there's stuff added
over hundreds of years and that everyone

seems to prefer that.
Is that your experience?

So I wouldn't say everyone, and this
is about probabilities and proportions,

not certainties,

and people disagree on this stuff and
have different preferences and they're

influenced by their own experiences,

the types of building that
are mere repetition or
perhaps a street I should say,

or big building,

you can get away with less variety
in the pattern for most people.

I'm not going to say what you will
like or dislike because that'd be

unreasonable where you've got a
richer or a more sinuous pattern.

So take the extreme case of
what you were just describing,

the Royal Crescent of Bath. Now all
the Crescent of Bath are actually ...

there's very little variety within the
pattern, but they're jolly beautiful.

Often they're sinuous, they well
... by definition they curve.

So the reduced variety bothers us
much less because other things are

marvellous about it.

In the two examples of repetition that
you just cited, the Rue de Rivoli,

right in the heart of Paris
is just opposite the Louvre.

It's deeply rich and textured. You've
got the arcade, it's a glorious street.

You've got a level of ornament there
that you wouldn't have in most streets,

which I would argue, I mean I'm not
going to tell you why you like something,

but certainly I also like
that street I should say.

And that's one of the reasons I like it.

I've also got happy memories of spending
time there when I was 18 or 19. But

the new proposed Marks and Sparks,

just to take a controversial
example in Oxford Street

is a spreadsheet without detail or
ornaments of the same window repeated time

after time after time without any

texture or pattern to it. Most people,

based on the stats,

dislike that type of repetition
without any level of greater detail.

So that would be my ...

Well, to play devil's advocate though,
if sometimes you add variation,

it makes things even worse. So not
to pick on a particular building,

but I'm about to the rear
facade of the eye hospital in

Morefield.

We polled that when I used to work at
policy exchange and it was by far the

least popular hospital design in the
country that we could get. And basically,

I dunno if you know it ...

I can't recall.

Hanging triangular orange shards
going down the side and then there's a

completely randomly shaped
box that comes out the middle.

So that sounds incoherent to me.

Okay.

I haven't seen it so I can't comment
or I probably have seen it but I can't

remember it. So yes,

the point is that you've got coherence
in the pattern and it's not just random

thing here thing there.

And the reason why on the whole patterns
that have been used for many years,

or I've got a particular
contextual geographic reference,

Glasgow or Gothic or Chinese or whatever,

typically they've grown out of
organic ways of building things.

So they've sort of got their own inherent
common sense and coherence because

ultimately it's a memory of a transom
or a tree or whatever it might be.

So here's a big question then.

I thought small question was quite big,

but there might have
been about four of them.

It's just a very interesting small
question. So the big question is,

and this is something I'm very,

very interested in and maybe even the
first reason why I ever knew what create

streets was. So first and foremost,

Sam and I got into this because we
were interested in building and why

so many people are against new
building happening nearby them.

And I think there are lots and lots
of interesting reasons why that isn't.

And the thing that I'm about to
talk about isn't the only one,

but I would like to know your opinion.

Do you think that people thinking that
buildings are ugly is one of the factors

that goes into this and how
strong can we show this?

Is it true or is it just
an excuse people make?

Actually it's both of those things.

It is true and it's also an
excuse perhaps more profoundly.

It's just an assumption. So it's
come that from several ways,

it's always a hard thing to pull on this
because there's a tendency here that

people give you the answer that they
think that you want or the high status

answer.

'I just don't think it looks nice' doesn't
feel like the type of thing you might

want to admit to. So I think there is a
bit of that that goes on. Nevertheless,

ask the question a different way.

There was from a YouGov poll from a few
years ago, 2% of the British public,

2% - it's not a typo - believe that new
development will make an existing place

better. That's not a great statistic
if you're a developer or a landowner.

I sometimes use that quote or that number
talking to conferences of architects

or planners and then I sort
of hit them with By the way,

7% think the planners can make
things better by their interventions.

So at a deep cultural level, this is
coming back to your question, very,

very low levels of trust that new building
and new interventions will improve my

place for my neighbourhood.

Is that what buildings look like? Well
that's certainly a part of it. Again,

looking at the polling and looking
at some of the focus groups,

we did a paper on this some years
ago looking at evidence in the uk, us

all anglophone and a bit of French,
and we didn't get into other countries,

it was before AI made it
easy to translate everything.

Loss of green space that bothers people,

buildings not feeling of here, people
who live here, not feeling of here,

consequences for infrastructure and
traffic and doctors places and school

places. Not trusting the developer,

not trusting the local council.
And if you don't trust them,

then even if the things they
say look great or are great,

if you literally don't believe them, then
in a way you discount the whole thing.

So is it just about what
buildings look like? No,

I'd never say that and I never have said
that there is a deep vicious circle of

I don't believe the people, I
think they'll make it uglier.

I dunno what the
consequences will be for me.

Does that get you into a spiral of just
not trusting? Yes, it definitely does.

Based on our experience, this is, again,

it's quite a hard thing to research in
the abstract. We certainly now have a

growing number of examples either that
we're aware of or that we've worked on or

indeed done ourselves
where we can say, look,

we can change the local politics
with the key bit starting bit.

I don't think this is the
only thing that matters,

but certainly how it looks
deeply changing situation.

So if it's okay to give a long answer
public, I can totally cite this.

So we've been working for some years
for a lovely part of England called

Litchfield, which is a market town
in the middle, in the Midlands.

We've been working for the council in
the council's role as a landowner rather

than the council's role
as a planning authority.

And there's a site called the Bird
Street? No, not the Bird Street site.

I think just on the edge of
the city centre I should say.

It's a mediaeval city in origin. Now
largely Georgian and 18th century to look

at with a lovely cathedral in the middle.

And between the train
station and the city centre,

there's a sort of bit of scrub land and
car park and a former multi-story car

park, a bit of nowheresville.
It could be anywhere.

Which should have been developed
years ago but just hadn't.

And fundamentally why hadn't was because
the politics and the economics and the

planning were in contradiction.
So the people said,

we want back to my earlier point about
detached houses. We want detached houses,

three cars, a bit of suburbia,
that's what we want. Thank you.

The planning and the developer said,

this is this city centre site
that's ridiculously low intensity,

inefficient land use, which is correct.

We should do much bigger
things and perhaps we should
do a big cinema and do the

next big building next to it because
it's next to the city centre. But the

people, the populus as expressed
through the political process,

kept basically rejecting that so that
this council owned site sat there doing

nothing wastefully for years after
years. So when we were asked,

we flipped the process round and we
didn't start by asking about the site,

but we both in community sessions and
then in an online survey that we ran a

visual survey, we said, what is
your favourite bit of Litchfield?

And we had a list of places
and the list of building.

So people could either respond to specific
prompts or they could unprompted just

suggest places. We then summarise
that and what came out of that.

Not that surprisingly, because
Litchfield is a lovely place,

I recommend listeners and watchers to go
and visit it you and it has an amazing

cathedral people in Litchfield
like Litchfield don't blame 'em.

Very rational decision,
the lovely gentle density,

it's variety in a patern somewhere between
the Rue de Rivoli the a High Street.

And so we then wrote a code for the

council saying well look
code for more of Litchfield

slightly reduced parking near the city
centre and it's near the train station so

you can take down parking a bit,
3, 4, 5 story terrace houses,

little bit of mansion blocks code
for that. And that's what we did.

And that's now been accepted. There
hasn't been a political explosion.

And on the basis of that code, which
is now established as local policy,

the site's been sold and we're
now supporting the counciling.

So we have used ultimately what it
looks like and what it feels like.

It's also the urban form
and the degree of enclosure.

It's not just what the
buildings look like,

but that is I think an existential
part of it to unblock the planning.

I had a quick question on
what is a mansion block?

So it's a very interesting
question that actually,

because a mansion block is a term that
was coined in the 19th century when

places like America and the UK started
using what at the time felt like a rather

continental or rather Parisian
form, but it's a posh way,

a posh old fashioned way of saying a
medium rise block of flats that looks

nice and is often associated in English.

English with Edwardian red
brick houses with coins and

undressed windows. Am.

I right in thinking that they're all
named after one specific mansion block

called Kensington Mansions
or something like that?

Oh, I don't know if that's meant to be
a trick question. You've tricked me.

I don't know.

If it's true you probably would know it.

I'm not saying it's not
true, I just don't know.

But what is interesting is that,

and Osbert Lancaster did a very
good pair of cartoons on this.

So at the same time as the posh mansion
blocks are being built in places like

Mayfair and Kensington, actually
the London County Council, 1920s,

1930s were building something

pretty similar often with slightly
bigger rooms actually though with less

external ornaments in the bit of London
that we've actually just driven through

places like Kensington
and Elephant and Castle.

I think it's very important to stress
this point that you've just made,

that this isn't just about architecture,
this is about the urban form.

Yes.

And I've heard you in the past talk
about doors opening onto the street or

animation of the street,

which you can explain what that
means in a second or windows or

just stuff, human level
stuff at the street level.

And it's certainly true
that if you walk through,

especially financial districts where
they've built glass towers and things like

that, which I really like
by the way from afar,

but once you get to the street
level, it's often totally blank,

totally anonymous at the street level
and it's just a kind of a wall of glass.

And you have talked a lot
about the shortcomings of
that kind of approach and I

wonder if you can talk a little bit about
what you think is wrong with that and

why an alternative approach is better.

Yeah, it's both about the use of
the streets, the feel of the streets

and the safety of the
streets. I should say though,

probably the first person to write about
this with real influence was an amazing

American lady, Jane Jacobs who
some of you may have heard of.

I was wondering if you
were going to mention her.

It's unfair to talk about street animation
without referencing her She certainly

had the breakthrough insights though she
was following earlier writers to some

degree. As a quick aside, it is,
I think it's worth referencing,

she was very much a journalist.

She was writing in the 1960s complaining
about what was happening to New York

under Robert Moses.

The level of criticism that she received
from architects and professional

planners was vicious.

I mean in terms of was shocking
then and even more shocking now.

I mean she was condemned as the rantings
of a sort of coffee stained woman.

There was an appalling level of casual
abuse that she received from the

professions.

But pointing out something that we can
now say and I'll now answer your question

was true. So she was right and they were
wrong and I'm not an non-expert person,

but the experts were wrong on this. So
to answer your question, the morphology,

the form

of streets and towns matters
in several ways. First of all,

it matters in terms of where
your backs and fronts are.

So one of the big mistakes that was made
post-war was we stopped having clear

backs and fronts to streets
and to blocks and to houses.

That has several levels
of problem. First of all,

actually it makes them less safe.

So if you can imagine a conventional
block with all of the mansion blocks

or terrorist houses facing outwards
and the backs facing in with gardens,

maybe a communal garden and a bit of
shared space in the middle, maybe not.

That's actually a very safe
way of creating an urban block,

which is correlated in UK and Australian
data with lower crime in that block

because it's just quite hard to break in.

You've got a public street with doors and
windows which are basically closed and

you've got a continuous form,
or a near continuous form,

if you've got the semi detached house
and the vulnerable bit around the back

where the kitchen window may be left open
or whatever you just physically can't

get to. So there's a very
practical case for that.

There's also then a psychological case,

which is that if you put all
the public facing activity

might be depending on where you are in
the town, it might be the front garden,

it might be the shop front,

it might just be the front door
facing in the same direction.

Then you just get more stuff happening.
And when you have more stuff happening

up to a point and makes it busier again
that correlates with a safer place.

The safest places in towns are ones which
are either inside your own home or are

quite busy and more sociable places where
people by the nature of the urban form

are helped to come together, I say
rather than forced to come together.

So if you've got so small front
gardens are correlated with

speaking to your neighbours
more. If they're too big,

either the house is buried away
behind a hundred yards of garden,

then you're not going to be pruning the
roses and spot Joe or Jane as he or she

walks past. If there's no front garden,
you're less likely to be out there.

If you've got a bay window or a window
above the ground floor looking out,

then A, you can see the street B, it
actually, if it opens onto the street,

I don't think I could prove this.
This is common sense,

I would argue rather than
something I can statistically show.

I think everything else I
can statistically demonstrate

there's more sense that people will
be looking out onto the street.

So people are more likely to behave
in an antisocial fashion if they think

either, either no one's looking or
they think that no one's looking.

So if you've got a confused back or front
and you've got blank walls facing onto

a street, no one's there, nothing's there.

There's nothing that
interests your eye or brain.

And practically if there's nothing
to stop you behaving in an antisocial

behaviour if you've got that fashion.
Actually as we were talking earlier, Sam,

I was talking about where the
Create Streets story started.

It actually started for me as I started
looking at some rebuildings of a failed

post-war estate in South London.

Literally one of the first walls I looked
at built within the last 20 years was

a blank wall with a ground floor
car park and an open access to

a corridor up at the first floor so that
if you were to stand on my shoulders,

I could hoist you up into that corridor.
You you'd have the full run of that

corridor with no one looking at you.

And the street itself is just unpleasant
because it's just a long blank wall.

Some people like blank walls, but
as the same fact, most of us don't.

So it's a way of concentrating activity.

Lots of random encounters happen at
street corners where two sets of passage

happen. So if you map where
people speak to each other,

it's more likely to be at a street corner,

hence the cliche than it is on the street.

You've got those two lines interacting.
So if you create that finally,

and again, it's not just
about how the street looks,

it's then also about having a street
passing with a high collectedness ratio.

You've got lots of streets, all of
their traditional block pattern.

That means it's easier to get
from any given A to any given. B,

you can walk this way or cycle or drive,

but there are lots of ways of cutting
through the street pattern without having

to do great big detours. So again,

you get that happy medium between
you're likely to bump into someone,

but you're not all funnelled
into that one way of going there.

So as with gentle density,
trade-offs are the way to do it.

I had one little thought there,
which you would be able to tell us,

you would be able to tell us this,
but it happens to be in my brain,

so I'm going to tell us this,
which is before, I don't know,

before the 1920s when you were
building a street in London,

there weren't that many rules
that you had to abide by,

but you are one of the landowners
expanding the city with say some street in

South London. You couldn't build a
culdesac over about, I don't know,

150 feet or something. I think
something like 50 feet. Can't remember.

There was,

there's a limit to the length of you
could do one without four houses on it,

but you couldn't build a true cul-de-sac.

You had to interconnect all your streets.

So even though the street network
wasn't planned by the city

as it was in say,

Madrid or Barcelona or Paris or New
York or basically anywhere else, sorry,

not Paris, anywhere except for Paris,

you would still got the interconnected
streets you're talking about.

So the were rules on streets. But yes,

the States until the early 20th
century to the best of my knowledge,

took no role in the actual
laying out of street patterns.

It was sort of implicit in
some of the rules like that,

but they didn't take any
role in doing it. I mean,

cul-de-sacs really interesting
actually. So cul-de-sacs are,

I'm about to say something now that
would annoy lots of urbanists culdesacs,

a very sensible and rational
response to motor cars

and houses on cul-de-sacs are worth
more -- revealed preferences --

than the house just off the cul-de-sac
because they're quieter, they're safer,

and if you've particularly got a child,

much rather your child probably played
out on your front lawn in a cul-de-sac

than on a road that's got busy traffic
going along it because who knows what

that car will do.

The problem then becomes if you create
a place which is just a series of big

feeder roads and then cul-de-sacs
off those big feeder roads, A,

it's a very inefficient land use B
comes back to what we're talking about

earlier. It then actually is very
inefficient to get from any A to any B,

even though you might be
quite close to someone,

unless you are basically breaking up
the cul-de-sacs for a lot of pedestrian

routes, which is a sensible thing to do.

You are very often then left driving to
get from A to B because it's actually

five times as long as it
should be. So in context,

like how detached houses
are not a bad thing.

They're quite good at an individual
level and there's certainly a rational

response to other things,

but put 'em all together and you
don't necessarily get a good outcome.

I live on an estate in Blackheath
that was planned in the 1970s to have

no through routes for cars, but
have through routes for pedestrians.

That's a good tradeoff.

So that way you can kind of get the
best of both worlds in that there's no

reason for any, I mean maybe
selfishly get the best of both worlds.

You make all the drivers nearby,
you have a slightly worse time,

they could go through you,

they have slightly higher network
capacity at certain times.

But from your perspective,

you can drive everywhere just
as well as you could before.

You can walk conveniently through
just as well as you could before,

but there's no traffic
going past your house.

The jargon for that is
'filtered permeability'.

I know you always like a bit of
jargon in at Works in Progress.

Is that what they're doing in
Barcelona with super Blocks? Yeah.

No, it's interesting.

I mean the whole debate in the UK about
low traffic neighbourhoods and things

like Superblox in Barcelona is basically
that it's retrofitting by stopping

the cars going through, but keeping
pedestrian or cycling access.

And it is actually, it's
often a sensible thing to do,

but it doesn't necessarily mean
it's always a sensible thing to do.

How much of what we're talking about
in terms of these different urban forms

relates to different
times in people's lives.

I think back to when I was
younger, before I had a family,

I lived in a tower block, it was fine.

I didn't really want
to know my neighbours.

I wasn't really at that stage in my
life. I liked being quite central.

It was cheap. It was a pretty good place.

Tell me about the tower block,

was it cheaper than a
Non-towerblock around the corner?

It was. It was an ex-council. It was a
pretty rundown tower block to be honest.

But now that I have children,

I live in a what you would call
gentle density terraced house,

and I'm very lucky to do so
when they're a bit older,

we probably want a bit more space.

Maybe we might want to move to a
semi-detached house, something like that,

a little bit further out.

And maybe when I retire I'll
want a little cottage or I'll.

Never retire.

Bungalow or something like
that. And I wonder how much the,

for whatever reason, maybe you have ideas,

we are oversupplying one type of house.

What I think is we don't
want to do is to sort of say,

this is good and this is bad.

And you're not saying this particular
form is good and this particular form is

bad.

You're saying this particular form is
maybe undersupplied relative to this other

form.

And that it's a good way of trading off
for people for a longer portion of their

life. So yeah, your hypothesis,
your premises correct

that we have different demands.

I've evidently you just set out
at different times of our lives.

The nice thing about gentle density I
would argue is that it can fit a higher

proportion of our life than the two
extremes. Let's take example of towers.

If you've got the cartoon
version of Create Streets,

you probably put us down
as against towers box.

I hope it's not quite
as simplistic as that.

I think what we'd say is towers work well
for some people and they work well in

some places.

They tend to be much more
expensive buildings to run,

particularly as they age. So it's
interesting what I picked you up on,

your pricing points, they
tend to be harder to retrofit.

So as building regs change, they just
tend to get really expensive to update.

It's quite hard to totally ignore
future regs as you take it forward.

They are quite consistently
associated in the data,

some of which is now quite old.

There are fewer studies done on this now
than there were 30 years ago after the

post-war wave of tower blocks.

They're quite consistently associated
with less good wellbeing outcomes for

their residents, particularly children.
Not saying they're always bad things,

I'm just saying that's
what the data tends to say,

particularly for less prosperous people.

They're certainly associated with
knowing your neighbours less well than a

gentle density neighbourhood.

We tend to not want to talk
to people in a corridor.

We tend to be more happy talking to
people in a street or in a slightly more

public space. We can get into why

and they tend to work better for people
who've got a home elsewhere. So are they

a good place for some younger or some
older people in city centres for some rich

people who've got a house elsewhere
probably without children. Yeah,

I think that's fair.

But that doesn't sound to me like
a recipe for towers everywhere.

By the same token, interesting you
mentioned older people. I mean,

we are now starting to see
this in some of the market,

the key thing's happening about older
people is that people are older for longer

now because living older and often now
with health conditions and with mobility

consequences, people actually
tended to die faster.

A generational or two ago often would
move to a house in the country into the

outer suburbs, that greenery, that
sense of control space, able to relax.

Those are all understandable things.

But actually once you start having
mobility issues, suddenly you are very,

very stranded if you're in the country
or an outer suburbia if you can't get

around easily.
So what's starting to happen,

I think rationally is we're starting
to see more retirement homes sheltered

living actually in historical old towns.
So a place like Salisbury in England,

there's a whole rush of them.

I'm presuming something in the market
and planning going on there as well.

I'd say it's a very rational actual place.

If you can't walk more
than a few hundred yards,

living in a town like Salisbury
or Winchester is probably a very,

very sensible place to live.

You can have a bit more space than you
might in a real city centre. So yes,

to answer your question, the short
answer to your question is yes,

but I don't think it means
you ban everything or ban.

Well, no,

but this is important because I am
personally somewhat invested in two

groups. We could call them the make
it easier to build things group.

Some people call them
YIMBYs, I would agree.

And the make it easier to have children
group, some people call them protists.

And within those and across
those two different groups,

you often get fights about what things
should be built. The pronatalists think,

'oh,

it's a really big problem if we build
too many apartments because people have

fewer children and so
on'. The YIMBYs often,

although a lot of YIMBYs I think are
relaxed about gentle density and love it,

and I'm one of them,

but often think it's crazy
to just build urban sprawl.

And why would you do that when you
could fit so many more people in?

And we know all the benefits
of density if you do it right.

And it seems like a kind of confected
debate when really the point is

at different times in your life where
you may have different preferences,

but you need different
things. And the mix,

the urban mix needs to accommodate people
throughout their entire life cycle,

not just, well, Sam Bowman likes
this type of terraced house,

so how many Sam Bowmans
are there out in the world?

It changes across Sam Bowman's life.

Yes,

but I'd still say that
if you've got a medium

rise terraced house,

which is quite an easy thing to retrofit
into a flat and turn back into a house

again. In fact,

I happen to know the house you live
in did used to be a series of flats,

as did mine. I also live
in a terraced house,

so houses or buildings I should say,

that can easily flex and change
and evolve the good things.

So a shop that can turn into a house
can turn back into a shop and into an

office. That's a good thing. In my
view. We cannot know the future.

We can't know what the different
market demands will be.

And if we're building sensibly,

I'd say we build a house that's
going to last longer than we will

a gentle density house,
to which in the regs,

it's quite easy to add a story or two
stories in a way that's predetermined. So

you could possibly particularly say we're
building a new settlement or extending

existing settlement, right?

We pre-approve all these terraced
houses and some semi detached and some

detached and a couple of
bigger buildings in the middle,

but we pre-approve them in such a way
that you can build it at three stories or

you can build it at five.
And we are totally relaxed.

And if you want 10 years down the line,
go up two stories, that's fine too.

So building in some degree
of flexibility into it,

I think is a wise thing to
do and something we basically

kill certainly in the
UK in different ways,

in different countries
taken out of the system.

Now it's very hard for places
to evolve organically. Ben,

I know that you've written about ...

Well yeah, and we also had Samuel Hughes
to talk about The Great Downzoning,

which is on this podcast, which is
not repeat. No, no, that's fine.

I think repeating the best
themes is really worth doing.

And that's what I wanted to put pressure
on this a little bit because I'm sure

you've seen one of those fanciful
visual maps of New York City in say

1830, and then seen the
same picture in 1930.

And obviously New York City in
Manhattan, I'm talking about here,

Manhattan in 1830 is like
a gentle density paradise.

It looks like Philadelphia or
most of DC or Brooklyn now.

And then in 1932, it's like giga density.

Obviously things have
changed a little bit,

but essentially you have by the park,

you've got 10 20 story apartment blocks,

and in Midtown and lower Manhattan,

you have big tower blocks for
offices and stuff like that. Now,

presumably you are not going to tell me
that the answer should have been they

build way more railways and they just
keep spreading out a gentle density

even on a constrained island. But
tell me, is that your contention?

Well, New York is not just
Manhattan, as you know.

Yeah.

So interestingly I'll
disagree then I'll agree

embarrassing.

I forget the statistic I did used
to know it much less of Manhattan is

giga-density, to use your phrase,

than is commonly assumed because obviously
it's the giga density you see from

the photograph taken from an aeroplane.
And a lot of it is brownstone,

medium rise. And I'd argue that
the big apartments by the park,

they're just an extreme version of
gentle density. They say they look nice.

So a portion of people in New
York and even in Manhattan,

not living in giga density is
surprisingly high, though embarrassing.

I can't remember the number as I
talk now. So I'd slightly challenge

your premise, but nevertheless, I
would agree with what's implicit,

even though I think it's
less true than you say,

should city centres in ancient or old,

well-established cities get
really high density? Yeah,

they probably should. Most of the time
it's not always going to be possible.

Would I want to do that to Paris?
Frankly? No, I like it so much.

I'm happy to contradict myself
and I'll fight to defend

the Rue de Rivoli against something
abhorrent. But the Strand,

take an example that pops
into my head strand in London,

which is descended from the old
German word for beach because when the

Anglo-Saxons restarted London
in the seventh century,

they pulled their long boats up the bank,

the northern bank of the Thames where
the tide brought them in onto the beach.

And that's why the strand
is called the strand.

And although you started having quite
big buildings on the southern side of the

strand facing the river in the middle
ages, that's a nice river view.

And the river was a key wave
getting around in the middle ages.

The northern end of the strand right
into the 17th century is basically

cottages. And now if you walk down
the strand, it ain't cottages anymore.

It's huge. Great buildings, old
restaurants, theatres, mansion blocks,

office blocks, and quite
rightly so they go.

In some areas like an individual
person's neighbourhood,

can I build a block of
flats in your neighbourhood?

The design of that particular block of
flats is probably not going to be the

driving factor behind whether they
think it's good or whether they think it

should happen or not.
Maybe in some cases ...

The height will put people off beyond
about seven or eight stories in most

cases.

Exactly.

So the purely aesthetic elements of the
design are not going to be the driving

force.

But I think when people think about should
we have strict historic preservation

like the listing system in the UK? So
the reason why most of Manhattan is,

as you say, like brownstone terraced
houses, is because they've been preserved.

They would all have been turned into
apartment blocks at various times in

history. And although I consider myself
to be one of the pro-housing people,

I would feel quite reluctant to remove
that kind of protection of a building

that's obviously going to get
worse. And so if we could trust,

I think for city centres,

the question is more like if we could
trust what they would do would be good,

then I think I would be demolish all
of the Victorian buildings because if a

Victorian would've thought I can do a
better building than the current building

that's sitting,

when they demolished the whole of Regent
Street and put in the 1920s version,

they were just thinking, well, yeah,
John Ashes built a great street,

but we can do better. And that
was the normal way of thinking,

and they were often right, right.

It's framed as you're describing
it, which I think is right.

It's framed as historical
preservation, but very,

very few of these buildings are
actually historically significant.

They're just nice and they're just
better than what people expect to come

afterwards.

I think I'm not going to go quite
as far in this, knock it all down.

I do love an old building,
but no, I basically agree.

Where does the heritage
movement come from?

It comes from the collapse of
confidence and the quality of what we

will do to the built environment.

So is there a heritage movement in
the 18th century or the 19th century?

No,

I mean to our way of thinking
staggering series of photos done right

at the end of the 19th, early 20th
century in what we now call Aldwych.

So that's actually recreated name.
It didn't used to be called that.

There was a street called Wych Street
which ran through that bit of London,

which doesn't exist anymore, though
it is well photographed again.

I go and have a look at
the photographs. It's like,

what's it called in
Harry Potter Diagon ...?

Alley.

Basically it's Diagon Alley and
right in the heart of London,

a mediaeval street with an
incredibly rich array of mediaeval

jacobian, 17th, 18th century shopfronts
and pub fronts. I mean, it's glorious.

I can't look at that and not regret
that It's not there. I have to,

sorry to break it to you. So if I could
wave a magic wand and bring it back,

even though I quite like
Aldwych, yeah, I would actually,

because I'd just love to walk down it.

And it now seems just
staggering that within just the

lifetime of my grandfather
that this could be pulled down.

However I agree with you.
Basically there was just no sense

til the 20th century that what we
replace it with would be worse.

You start to get just inklings
of it in the 1920s and thirties.

So you talked about Regent Street,

you're quite right. Basically what
happened was that the crown lease fell in

after a century. So the crown, which
was the landowner, basically said, well,

it's John Nash stuff. I mean, it's all
four story high, it's done out of stucco.

It's not in great nick anymore.

Let's whack it up six or seven
stories Portsmouth stone,

and we'll make more money
and it can still look lovely.

There was a little bit of disquiet.

So something called what
became the Georgian group
did get formed and there were

a few complaints,

but it never got any purchase because
not that many people were interested in

the new Regent Street, which are now of
course, all grade I listed is lovely,

but then it's in the 1960s and 70s
that you start getting a major reaction

against this stuff. And Simon Jenkins,

who was a young journalist
in the sixties and seventies,

he went to some of the public meetings
where they were planning to knock down

the strand down, sorry, most of Whitehall,

get rid of Covent Garden and
replace it with the motorway box.

And his quote was, public officials
were lucky to get out alive.

The GLC, which at the
time was Conservative run,

basically got voted out of power because
the incoming Labour administration 1970

something basically said, no scrap
that we're not going to do it.

So it became very, very political.

That does relate to something that Ben
and Samuel Hughes have both written about

for us, which is this point
about collective land ownership.

And when you have land ownership that
isn't just the street or properties

on the street, but the whole area,

there's an incentive to preserve
things like the Diagon Alley,

Wych Streets something like that.

Not because they are intrinsically
valuable by themselves,

and if it was just the street owned by
itself, it might not be that valuable,

but it enhances the
value of the entire area.

It basically becomes a tourist attraction,

which is something that I know Ben has.

Or an attraction to people
who live there. Yeah,

and I think there's an
interesting quandary,

and I think I leave it to the economists
to try and resolve this one collective

land ownership,

which in some ways can feel quite
uncomfortable if it's done wisely.

It's not always done
wisely, but done wisely.

It leads to great bits of urbanism.
The classic recent example,

I mean literally only a few years old,

is a new street that's been created by
the Cadogan Estate just running north

of Sloane Square that
said, it's a new street.

They've essentially repurposed
what was just the back of things.

They put little shops there,
they, they've done it nicely.

They've put a few houses there
clearly, although it could,

it's quite low density for Central
London. But it's lovely, it's very tight.

It's always crammed when I'm there and
clearly it's adding value to their rental

income from surrounding
properties like that.

So they'll regard that as the right
thing to do commercially as well as in

stewardship terms.

I have heard you use in this
conversation a little bit,

but also at other times while
listening the phrase Traffic Modernism,

what do you mean by that?

It's me being a little bit naughty.

So there was a huge confidence

mid-century that the city
of the future would look

profoundly different from
the city of the past.

And there were several
strands running into that,

but I'll just take one man to
epitomise it. I could give others.

So the Swiss-born French practising
architect who's known as local

Corbusier,

I believe sincerely believed that the
invention of a motorcar meant that we

should basically start again with cities.

And that the idea of creating a walkable
city in which you will bump into your

neighbour was just
unhygienic and sort of silly.

So his vision for the city and different
versions of this done by different

architects at different time.
Corbusier was a fan of big buildings,

huge towers zoned by use
and by social class with

motorways freeways in between them
connecting them and then just parkland

and some versions of it had the motorways
running at ground level. Other ones

done by others later had them running
literally above the buildings and over the

top of the buildings, which I
think present other challenges.

But leave that to one side and that
would be the city of the future.

He was funded by a French motor company,

Voisin, to propose a
future vision for Paris,

which was known as the plan
de Voisin, which literally ...

I would protect Paris, I have to tell you.

Basically took out Paris and replaced
it with a series of tower blocks and

streets, and in a slightly
less radical version,

the London Plan done
by Patrick Abercrombie,

whom I'm distantly related ironically,

and then pushed further by other
writers in the fifties and sixties,

essentially proposed versions of the same.

So London was to be
surrounded by a series of six,

I think it was change of various times,

five/six/three/seven at various times.
So concentric motorways or fast roads

with massive rebuilding
in between. For a period,

every property built in Central London
had to have connecting points at first

floor level so you could connect
into the first story walkways

that would connect buildings because
below would just be sort of a sea of cars.

The amount of urban destruction that
would've required would've made the blitz

of 1940 to 1941 look like
a modest rounding error.

So it was a very radical,

I think everyone can agree on
that vision about the future.

So that's what I mean
by Traffic Modernism.

But what I took that was also linked
to a very different view about

architecture, which was purely,
I mean the Vitruvian triad.

Vitruvius is the only ancient writer
about architecture whose works properly

come down to us.

He said that what we should create
buildings that are beautiful,

that are useful and that are strong.

So he's got different ways of thinking
about it. But at the same time,

modernists went on a journey Initially
they actually continued to think the

building should be beautiful.

So the early writings of
Corbusier does talk about beauty,

but by the end of Corbusier and the second
generation that's increasingly being

denied. So alongside this view
of a totally reconceived city,

spread out zoned much wider
land use because the idea that

petrol might be rationed
is not even in their minds.

You also get a view of buildings,

which is they're just purely
utilitarian expressions on the

outside of what's going
on in the inside. In fact,

I was interviewing an architect yesterday
who's explaining how he tried in his a

architecture school to ask questions
about what a building looked like,

whether it should look nice
and that people should like it,

and very experienced and senior
architect basically said, 'No, no, no.

What it looks like on the outside is just
an expression of the inside.' So it's

a very different functionalist, a
very private, I'd say very selfish,

a very uncommunal, a very
antisocial, I would say,

way of thinking about buildings.

So although that pure version of plan
was of course never came to pass,

we do see consequences of that in cities.

11 of the 12 poorest lower super output
areas in England have got a fast road

running alongside them
all through them. Now,

I'm not quite saying that's consequential.

What happened in London was they started
doing this quite successfully in the

poor bits in the east.

So when they started trying doing it
in the centre and the west that the

politics blew up in their faces. So
that's what I mean by traffic modernism.

In its extreme case,

the consequences normally are a
little bit less extreme than that,

but it's fast roads, ugly buildings, and
no sense of place or home in the world.

What's different or maybe there is
nothing different between when they cut.

So in the past,

cities of the 19th century used to
decide that we are over congested.

We need more infrastructure.
So what we do,

we'll take a s swat of buildings and just
demolish them and build a road through

there so that we can have space to
do it. And this was extremely common,

especially with unplanned
cities like Paris and London.

So the Metropolitan Board of Works built
Shaftsbury Avenue and a Regent Street

was driven through all these buildings.

There are many other examples
of streets like that.

What's difference different between
that and the Ring Waves project or maybe

that was also bad Thes project and.

I think you sort of answered it yourself
and your questions. Let's imagine,

I mean,

let's think about the difference between
Regent Street and an urban motorway.

They're very different places to be and
they've got very different levels of

building. So does driving a new
street through an existing place,

does that have negative effects for people
who lose their home or get bought out

or feel As is often the case,

it's often the poorer and the less able
who are on the bad end of that deal,

but you are left with something that
is still demonstrably part of the urban

fabric or tissue. You haven't
unseeded or deitch the city.

You've just created a bigger
road going through it. In fact,

let me use that more quickly. You've
created a bigger street going through it.

I'd say that is still a street a clue
in the title of Create Streets. When you

create a dual carriageway
or a very wide road,

normally there must be some exceptions
without buildings on either side.

I'd say you are creating a scar in the
urban fabric, you're dest stitching it,

and you are creating a
shatter zone around it.

So if you look at the property values or
Charles booth's map in the late 19, 30,

20th century, those buildings
onto the busy streets,

they're normally of the higher social
status than the slightly smaller buildings

around the back.

If you look at the land values
per square foot in a modern city,

the buildings immediately proximate
to that very wide and fast street are

normally much lower value per square
foot than the buildings further off.

So the consequences for the
neighbourhoods, I would argue, is very,

very different as a function
of the width, the speed,

and the fundamental concept
of what you're doing.

I think if we take that too far,

then we start to say that there are these
things which have big benefits for the

city overall.

So agglomeration benefits come from
being able to move quickly around a city.

If you can't move from one end of
the city to the other in an hour,

you can't do the commute
basically. So we start with that.

We start with that. Railways
are almost above ground.

Railways are basically always urban scars,
right? Especially if you've got four,

you've got four lines. So if you
think of, for example, in London,

Primrose Hill, I mean I'm sure Primroses
Hill likes it quite a great deal,

but Primroses Hill is walled off from
Camden by eight lanes of eight railways

and there's only one bridge over,

and it's quite difficult to get between
the two of them so that they can have

basically cut off the
urban form, deliberate cut,

in this case a desirable cut from the
perspective of residents of Primrose Hill.

But railways do this too.

Basically all infrastructure
has and railways very loud.

If you live next to the DLR and
it's turning, people probably be,

the L is very unpopular when it's turning.

My point isn't you shouldn't
have any fast roads.

My point is merely that the disbenefits
to the neighbourhoods from a modern fast

road are much greater than
from a 19th century street,

which I think is unarguable. Your point
on trains is clearly true. At one level,

the big,

big qualitative difference between
trains and a motorway is that

trains aren't continuous. I've
lived actually next to train.

I actually quite liked it.

My grandparents' house had a train
running along the back of it,

and my sister and I would go
and wave at it as it came past,

and it happened five or six times a day.

That was a particularly infrequent
train. I concede. So your point,

I think it fundamentally, your
point is fair, but I think

it's in the gradient that
the difference happens.

Is a big city going to have some motorways
going into some portion of it? Yes,

it clearly will.

Should we move for most of
us much of the time from a

situation where you assume you are going
to drive from one end of the city to

the other two, it's incredibly
easy to go buy, bike, e-bike,

train, tram, tube. Yeah,

I think we probably should because we
come back to your point about efficiency,

the agglomeration effects of towns,

and we know that cities get more efficient
and productivity goes up as they get

bigger, as density
increases in size increases.

We all know that you
probably know better than me,

you want people to be able
to get around a street.

I hope I'm going to get my numbers
right here. It's from memory,

a street that's doing walking or
tramming or cycling basically takes about

20 times as many people as a car
does. So that's not a profound,

and cars have their role. Cars are
great liberators in the countryside.

They bring freedom and there can be
lovely places to sit in and they can look

cool, but in a town,

they're just not a very good way of
optimising movement for most of us,

most of the time.

Although we have to look
at people kilometres per
second, not people per second.

Because if you're moving
through the space quicker,

then you use it for less time.

But you're typically in a town you're not,

because I'm sure the average
speed in Central London,

I don't have all the cities
at my fingertips basically
stayed the same as best

we can judge for over a hundred years
because the constraint on how far a car

moves in a city is not what it
can do. It's all the other people,

which is also true for cars.

Another provocation then, if it's true.

I didn't think your heart
was in the last provocation.

Well, maybe if it's true that the most
efficient way of moving people around is

railways cycling, all these
other in towns. Yeah, in towns.

Then why is the most
productive part of the world?

The San Francisco Bay area basically
have extremely bad transit and 80 to

90% car/taxi mode share.

So in this particular place,

all the guys going to work in
Palo Alto or wherever they're

driving in a car, nearly everyone.

So the most productive place in
the world is a car-based place.

So I've not spent time there,

so I am always a little bit
nervous of answering that.

My understanding is that you've
still got hubs of more traditionally

conceived bits of town and village
where people do come together.

I'm happy to be disputed on that.
I've not spent time on the west coast.

I mean America has had a great luxury,

which is infinitely more space than
we have in much of Europe. Come back.

We talked, we touched on the
politics earlier. Can we imagine,

I mean the current government sort of
trying to do it, but perhaps not wisely,

can we imagine a situation in which
London literally takes over all of the

southeast of England, which is what
we'd be talking about to get to that?

I don't think that's politically
imaginable. It's conceivable,

but I don't think it's imaginable. So
if we concede that, then you're saying,

okay, well fine. How do
we build those homes?

Well, that leads exactly into
what I wanted to talk about next,

which is housing reform
in the world today.

So we ... Yes, yeah. Well,

I think that lots of people,

everyone I know basically is interested
in housing reform and in getting more

houses built and

thinks that it's a big problem that we
are under building around the world.

And we talked about one way
where to get more houses built,

which is design places that people like
a bit more either because of better

architecture or because better urban
design and the other ways we've talked

about fronts and backs and having doors
onto the street and public spaces and so

on. But one other, I'm interested,
I know you as a person,

so I happen to know some
of the things you've done.

You've worked in housing reform
in the uk. Where do you think,

what have you worked on and what do you
think are the most promising things?

What are you excited about?
What are the general rules here?

I mean, right now I'm a
little bit depressed by it. So

are millions of homes short in the
UK and we've got a very unbalanced

economy where we're very dependent on
the southeast and a few other hotspots.

So it is almost perfectly
difficult to solve.

We got some good legislation
through under the last government,

which is still usable now.

So the government has given itself
a high target of 1.5 million homes,

not actually high compared to what we
need, but I think quite high politically,

given what the current
system is producing,

they've put a lot of focus on
new towns and reform to the

planning of infrastructure. Those
are both good things to focus on,

but almost by definition
they're both slow.

Infrastructure is going to be upstream
from building homes and by definition is

more likely to be new settlements or
extensions to existing settlements than

making use of existing
infrastructure within a town.

New towns by definition is new.

The planning infrastructure
bill is going slowly.

The new towns is going very slowly.

So they've had over a
year to do the commission.

It's now 15 months since it was
commissioned and we still haven't seen the

results and they've watered down some of
the terms of reference from what we've

initially suggested.

We need to move from being house builders
to town builders without that gentle

density. So I'm quite
worried about those. Frankly,

where I'm hopeful or I would
like to be hopeful is a series of

reforms made under the 2023 at the
local Levelling up and Regeneration Act

plus actually some reforms made about
a decade ago under Localism Act in 2012

from memory are just sitting there
right now and I think have enormous

potential. So this is something
I was halfway to doing.

I think if I could wave my magic wand,

I would encourage the government to put
far more focus on what they like to call

brownfield passports. By that I mean not
a free-for-all, do anything anywhere.

What I mean is back to our
earlier conversation about
design codes and pattern

books,

predetermine empirically using
evidence as to what local

people will stomach fashions
to intensify existing streets

or to intensify underused sites.

What about smaller things? So you said
you lived in a historic terraced house.

Do you have a roof story?

So this is unfair because something here.

So this is the only policy we've
ever promulgated from which I think I

personally would benefit.

So I do live in a historic terraced
house as you well know, Ben.

So there are lots of cases where it
actually, the policy has not got better,

where it should be easier to go up a
story or two stories and create extra

bedrooms. Now that doesn't help
count the government on its targets.

They're talking about homes. But as
I think as you and others have shown,

creating extra bedrooms nevertheless
does help the housing crisis.

It creates obviously extra giving the
system and more fluidity and more places

that individuals,

single adults or young adults or
older adults can rent or share in.

So it's a good thing.

We did get a change in what's called the
National Planning Policy Framework to

encourage that there's been a change since

the change of government last year,

which pushes it in a more YIMBY direction.
So it is actually looser in terms of

its requirements for design
quality. I actually worry,

so this it's my non-YIMBY side,

I think I'm at heart a YIMBY actually
worry that that might lead to

mechanism well.

So local councils being less likely
to approve it and to it therefore not

happening as much or political
blowback. And as a statement of fact,

we are seeing at Create Streets in some
of the actual cases we're working on,

we're seeing that local officials
remain incredibly resistant to this,

particularly in heritage context.

And it normally relies on motivated
owners and local counsellors,

elected representatives to push it
through. So we are seeing examples,

actually we were talking
about one earlier.

So a whole series of streets in Tower
Hamlets have just had mansard roofs.

One story pre-approved, a
really interesting case study,

which is hot off the press, actually Ben,

you won't know this. So there was one
made last year in Kensington, Chelsea,

a very prosperous bit of
Central London, very modest,

actually a predefined local development
order by pre-approving a mansard

uplift on 12 houses. I mean ridiculous
amount of effort for 12 houses.

The good news is you could copy it
across hundreds of other houses.

And the reason they got it through
and the local officials, actually,

I'm assuming this, I dunno this,

I assume the reason the local officials
didn't basically stop it was because the

other half of the street is already
done and because the half of the street

we're talking about had lost some of its
ballast trade details or lovely running

along the top, only one of them has it.

So the terms of the local development
order, you must put back the ballast.

I'm fine with that.

In the just over a year since
that mechanism was made,

five out of the 12 houses have
submitted a planning application or even

physically started building.
So the latent demand is being revealed.

So I think we should do a lot
more of that. And in some cases,

and you've written about this, if it's
semi-detached or modern houses, I would,

with a little bit of pre-approval, I
would pre-code for terraced houses,

mansion blocks, and pre-approved
for millions of new homes.

So I see it as a continuum. And
again, just as a case study,

we did a project on this in a place
called Chesham in Buckinghamshire where

working for the town council, we worked
up a neighbourhood development order,

which is a similar mechanism
controlled at a different level

from memory 950 homes within
the carpus of the town.

This is a town which had just had a
political lost to the conservatives

in a bi-election because it was
trying to build on the green belt,

which was politically unpopular.

But we got strong local support for these
950 homes within the town. I remember

one conversation I was in where
we always do drop-in sessions,

we go to the high street or we go to
the summer fair or the Christmas market,

and the guy came up to
me ready to have a fight,

ready to complain about the four story
and the three story buildings that we

were essentially suggesting in the high
street of the historic town night I

turned around and I said, 'Well
look, this is four stories.

And look, actually,

this is one of the houses we used as a
model' and that was basically the end of

the fight. So we believe we can get that
level of pre-approval if it fits in.

You've talked quite a bit about London.

You've talked a lovely amount
about London and a bit about Paris.

Where else in the world
to kind of wrap us up,

can listeners go if they want to see
great streets, what cities, towns,

parts of the world would you recommend?

Well, first of all, I apologise
for talking too much about London.

I'm a Londoner so it comes more
naturally to mine than other

streets and other cities.
I apologise for that. Look,

the good news is I'm very glass
half full on this type of stuff.

Any street built before the onset of
traffic modernism is probably lovely.

It probably uses local materials and it
probably rhymes with a street around the

corner. One of my favourite
streets, well, in England,

this is a bit of a cheat
because it's a bit weird.

There's a street called Gold Hill,

which winds down a slope in a lovely
town called Shaftsbury on the Dorset

border.

You've seen it in the Hovis adverts.

Yeah, yeah. Well I've seen
it more recently, but yeah,

could you build every street in
England like that? No, you couldn't.

But you've got a row of cottages curving
down the street with the countryside of

England and the sinews
of the hills are behind.

And I defy anyone not to go there
and say, what is jolly nice actually,

so good streets are available
elsewhere in other countries.

I think one of my favourite street
types are the fundamental in Venice,

which are the streets where one side
is the canal and then one side is the

row of houses. The fascinating
thing about Venice, again,

we were talking about
pattern books earlier,

is obviously you've got
your great churches and your
famous palaces and palazzos

along the Canal Grande in Venice. But
actually if you look at the back streets,

most of 'em are incredibly
simple and they're just lovely.

They're actually quite
normal. They're good ordinary,

and often because you've got the slightly
wider street and you've got a little

bit of water, people love looking
out on water. It's a very,

very findable pattern. In land values.

Add a view of water to
the same street slightly,

depending on the quality of
the water and other things.

You'll push up land value between
15 and about 85% wide range.

But it'll always go up. I mean,

unless you've got invaders coming
in or something. So I think yes,

so fundamental in Venice and Gold Hill
in Shaftsbury. There you go, there's two.

What about New Streets?

So I mean maybe your projects
are the answer to this question,

but outside of your own projects
stuff that's in the last, since 2000,

basically what's been done really well?

Where can we look to for inspiration of
the new neighbourhoods that we should

be?

The good news is actually, I
mean we didn't touch on this.

There is a renaissance starting to happen.

So I'm far from the only person writing
and thinking about this. But in America,

in France, in Germany, in
Holland and Denmark in the UK,

right wing/left wing/ no wing at all,

more and more people are doing this
type of research, thinking about it,

writing about it, and
then creating new places,

responding more thoughtfully
to traditional patterns.

But with modern technology.
So almost at random,

some of the streets in Seaside in America,

which you've all seen in the Truman
Show, are gorgeous, very simple,

very walkable wooden streets.

I visited the first time a place called
Clammer on the outskirts of Paris a

couple of months ago, coming
back from my holidays.

I was literally speechless.
I forgot doing this.

It's really fascinating.
They've created a lake,

it's a tram and a metro wide away from
central Paris. So that comes back to that

transport. It's slightly higher
density than traditional Paris,

6, 7, 8, 9 stories.

It's got more balconies than you'd have
in a traditional house or apartment

block in Paris because they're creating
all this value by creating all these

views and the balconies over the lake.

But they've done it in a way that
it still feels very Parisian.

It's got the traditional limestone,

it's got some of the metal mouldings that
you all immediately recognise as Paris

people, like things that feel like
of here, even if it's not your here.

So we're actually about to publish
something on that, a short little essay,

but Clamart in Paris or Plessis Brion
down the road are just staggering

actually.

So we are doing good stuff again and
obviously what the King's been doing in

Poundbury you can create some marvellous
streets with street trees very cleverly

brought out into the carriageway to just
gently slow down the traffic without

making it feel annoying.

Well, on that note, thank you very
much, Nicholas for joining us.

Thank you for listening.

Don't forget you can go to
works in progress.co to get
your subscription to the

new print edition of Works in Progress,

possibly the best magazine ever produced.
And if you want to read more of us,

you can read it there as well. Nicholas,

thank you very much for joining us
and thank you very much for listening.

Thank you very much for having me.