Britain’s housing crisis, stagnant economy and creaking infrastructure didn’t happen by accident — and they won’t fix themselves.
A newly published collection of essays from Dr Nicholas Falk (URBED) and Dr Richard Simmons (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL) makes the case for Social Cities: clusters of well-connected, sustainable towns and cities that can genuinely turn things around.
The approach is practical, not utopian. Three steps: upgrade public transport, assemble the right sites, and build urban extensions that deliver homes, jobs and better lives together — not in spite of each other.
Drawing on decades of evidence from European and British success stories, the papers show what actually works — and why Britain keeps getting it wrong. Lord Richard Best, former Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, calls it “a shortcut to finding the enduring solutions to this country’s huge — but not insoluble — housing and planning challenges.”
If you’re wondering where Britain goes from here, this has some of the answers.
This document is a compilation of nine papers published by the Town and Country Planning Association (T&CPA).
