Our Philosophy

The principles underlining our work

“To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable,

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people for different purpose, but who are able to use many facilities in common.

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield that they must produce.   This mingling must be fairly close grain.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people for whatever purposes they may be there.  This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.”

With these words from her 1961 book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Jane Jacobs highlighted four abiding principles that succinctly prescribe how to build successful cities. Sixty years later they still provide the clearest agenda to resolve the competing pressures of commerce and social cohesion.

Our experience shows time and again that by adopting this agenda developers and local authorities can both achieve outsize gains.

We say simply, ‘Create the City’