Nicholas Boys Smith

Nicholas Boys Smith
Alma mater	Peterhouse, Cambridge
Occupation(s)	Campaigner, Researcher
Organization	Create Streets
Movement	New Urbanism

Nicholas John Boys Smith MBE is an English author, researcher and campaigner, best known as the founding Director of Create Streets, an independent research institute that campaigns for gentle density in urban planning, subscribing to ideas of the New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture movements.

Many of Create Streets' ideas are now being embedded in national and local planning policy and Boys Smith has been widely recognised as greatly influential over the UK government's policy in this area, being described as the Conservative's ‘Building Design Tsar’.

Education

Grandson of John Boys Smith, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Boys Smith was educated at Westminster School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read history, taking a double first and an MPhil with distinction. While at university, he was President of the Cambridge Union.

Career

After graduating from university, Boys Smith worked at the Conservative Research Department, including as an adviser on welfare policy to the Conservative social security secretary, Peter Lilley. He then spent a period of time as a McKinsey consultant and an investment banker at Lloyds. In 2006 he advised George Osborne, then shadow chancellor, on tax policy.

Boys Smith set up the think tank Create Streets in 2012 "out of frustration with the low quality of too much recent development and of irrational decision-making." The public genesis of the organisation came through a 2013 report authored by Boys Smith and Alex Morton, titled Create Streets, co-published with Policy Exchange.

Boys Smith has since co-chaired the British Government's Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission with Roger Scruton, publishing in 2020 its final report Living With Beauty. As of 2024 he serves as chair of the ‘Office for Place’ within the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

In addition he is a Commissioner of Historic England and a senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham. He writes extensively on development, planning and the links between design, wellbeing, value, sustainability and public support. Boys Smith's writing has appeared in the Spectator, Evening Standard, The Times, ‘’ Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

In 2022 he published his first book, No Free Parking, a history of London's built environment, focusing on places appearing in the London version of the game Monopoly.

In 2024, Boys Smith was awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours List for services to planning and design.

Works

• "Create Streets" (PDF). (2013, Policy Exchange & Create Streets, With Alex Morton)
• "Living With Beauty" (PDF). (2020, UK Government, With Roger Scruton)
• No Free Parking (2022, Blink Publishing, ISBN 978-1789465389)