The Building Better Building Beautiful Commission has urged UK councils to reject "ugly" housing schemes and prioritise car-free developments in its latest report.
More weight should be placed on attractive housing developments when giving planning permission, suggests the commission's latest report, called Creating space for beauty.
The report urges councils to have confidence to "say no to ugliness" and to involve local communities at an earlier stage of the design process, rather than the current model where people can't lodge objections until the planning stage.
"Beauty for everyone, not just the wealthy"
Car-free high streets are recommended in the report as well as building mixed-use communities instead of residential-only developments ? where people often need cars to access basic amenities. Overall the report places an emphasis on developing brownfield sites and focusing on beauty no matter where building takes place.
"Redeveloping abandoned out of town retail parks and ugly old supermarkets would deliver something much more beautiful in the form of thriving new communities where people can raise a family, work or settle down," said interim chairman Nicholas Boys Smith.

"Beauty should not be just a property of the old buildings or protected landscapes but something we expect from new buildings, places and settlements," added Boys Smith, who took over when original chair Roger Scruton was sacked in May.
"We n...