Roger Scruton’s campaign for beautiful buildings is finally being won

Travelling around Britain, one is given the sense that built up areas are mostly ugly, while the countryside is mostly beautiful. As a lover of the urban, this is distressing. For new buildings to be ugly feels as inevitable as death and taxes. But it does not have to be. Over almost a decade, a small group of activists have brought beauty into the heart of development policy. The Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s speech at Policy Exchange this week signals that a revolution is well under way, even if there is still a long way to go.

Given that almost everyone thinks that the appearance of the built environment matters, it is strange that there has not always been a strong ‘beauty movement’ in British planning. Part of the reason is that for such a long time there were so few truly ugly buildings. Buildings that were considered ugly or upsettingly utilitarian by aesthetes of the time are often treasured now.