Creating Streets and Making Places: With Nicholas Boys Smith

Join us in this episode where Nicholas Boys Smith, the Chair of the Government’s Office for Place and Founder of Create Streets, sets out his vision for how we tackle the two fundamental challenges that have changed the direction of planning policy, as well as his career:

1. It matters that we don’t have enough homes
2. It matters what people like when it comes to the places that we create

A drive through South London 12 years ago led Nicholas on a voyage of discovery to try to understand why the places that the current planning and development system creates appear (in his words) to “replicate many, but not all, of the errors of what it is replacing”

Nicholas founded Create Streets to try to understand what people actually want, and advocate for design solutions that will lead to better outcomes in terms of resident satisfaction, and allow developers to build places that ‘make people fall in love with the future’.

His work on the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission led to a role Chairing the Governments’ new Office for Place, which has been influential in the creation of planning policy over the last five years.

In this episode, Nicholas describes his background, what drives his passion for places, and how he goes about working with private and public sector partners to define the future of our urban and sub-urban realm.