Restiching Dresden: Coventry’s German twin city on the Elbe

Posted Posted in Case Studies

Leon Furkert of the Dresden Historical Society tells the story of Dresden’s renaissance At our recent Restitch conference in Coventry, Leon Furkert from the Dresden Historical Society, spoke movingly about ‘how the city was given its heart back’, about the citizen-led and locally popular rebuilding of Dresden’s Frauenkirche and old towns. An ‘optional extra’ during […]

Restitch 2024, the social fabric summit

Posted Posted in Restitch Summit

On 7-8 March 2024, Create Streets co-hosted our second Restitch summit in Coventry. This was for the foreword to the summit which greeted delegates from our founding chair, Nicholas Boys Smith alongside Adam Hawksbee, deputy director of Onward, and Josh Simons, director of Labour Together. Social fabric matters. The places we inhabit, the people we […]

How to improve your neighbourhood

Posted Posted in Uncategorized

We are often contacted by individuals or community groups asking how to improve their neighbourhoods. We have previously published some advice on this, Love thy neighbourhood, in 2016. It’s mainly aimed at those living in England, though many of the principles will apply more widely. However, it is a little out of date now thanks […]

Creating home: a Community Land Trust development in rural West Dorset

Posted Posted in Guest Blog

Sheila Hawkins writes about the marvellous home-making work of the Broadwindsor Group Parish Community Land Trust with some additional thoughts from Alison Ward of Middlemarch Community Led Housing and Nicholas Boys Smith. At the beginning of September 2023 families with smiling faces  began moving into to their brand new homes at Northcombe Lea in Drimpton, […]

Kingston renaissance?

Posted Posted in Architecture

Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor discuss the genesis and ongoing success of their traditional design course at Kingston University as it passes its thirteenth birthday. In 2011 we established the first traditional design studio in a RIBA accredited mainstream educational institution for over 80 years.  At Kingston University we have pioneered a course of traditional […]

Planning says no

Posted Posted in Guest Blog, Planning

Hastings resident, Dr Graeme Davis, reflects on his recent attempts to create a new home…  If Hastings Town Council had not demolished the heart of Old Town Hastings it would probably now be a World Heritage Site. Slum clearance in the 1930s allowed the Council to buy, at minimal cost, 191 old houses in the […]

Why do traditional places make the best Christmases?

Posted Posted in Streets, Uncategorized, Wellbeing

When you think about it, nearly all of our happy Christmas clichés depend on traditional towns, walkable streets, beautiful houses and vernacular homes with (let’s be honest) slightly antiquated approaches to keeping warm. Here are six components of the traditional Christmas. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy these in the deep countryside, the wide suburb […]