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Samuel Hughes
@SCP_Hughes
Editor @WorksInProgMag | Fellow @CPSThinkTank & @createstreets | Interested in architecture & urbanism | Views my own
London
Joined August 2020
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Jun 10
    We often complain about 'America-brain', the tendency of Twitter-reared Europeans to misapply American framings to their own countries. In the case of housing, however, America-braining might actually be a good thing. In fact, Europeans could do with being a lot more
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Feb 17, 2023
    Built at great sacrifice, Old London Bridge was by far the longest inhabited bridge in Europe. It was considered a wonder of the world, and seen with enormous pride by Londoners. Both rich and poor donated heavily to its upkeep, often leaving bequeaths 'to God and the bridge'.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Jul 18, 2025
    Dresden. Every building pictured dates from the last twenty years, the result of a 2002 municipal referendum in which the city decisively voted in favour of reconstructing its historic centre.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Mar 12, 2021
    Some of the finest urbanism on earth: Valletta, Malta.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Mar 22, 2025
    People lament 'repetitive boxes', but if you make good repetitive boxes, they can be greatly beloved. It is only a modest exaggeration to say that the Georgians designed one excellent box and then repeated it 500,000 times.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Nov 4, 2024
    This architect, Claire Totman, apparently specialises in renovating suburban houses. Interesting to see how much she achieves by a few simple tricks: celebrating the door, floral borders, symmetrical small-glazed windows, consistent colour palette, tidying up materials.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Apr 29, 2025
    In the 1700s and 1800s, English and Irish developers laid out hundreds of garden squares, though there was no planning requirement that they do this, and though they never made any money on them. Why?
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Apr 13, 2025
    The Northumberland Line was closed to passenger traffic in 1964, but reopened by Northumberland Council in 2024 in the face of much naysaying and defeatism. So far ridership has been *five times* higher than even the Council anticipated, an off-the-charts success. Does this
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Nov 16, 2024
    In 1846, the peak year of the Railway Mania, Parliament mandated 9500 miles of railways. HS2 is 140 miles. Imagine a country with less than a tenth of our GDP mandating 67 HS2s in a single year, and one begins to have a sense of what sort of people the Victorians were.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Mar 23, 2022
    A street in King's Cross, 2008 and 2019. If you can spare a couple of parking spots, this is perhaps the simplest and best way to transform a street.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Sep 26, 2025
    The King endured decades of mockery and vitriol for building a mixed use, walkable, vernacular urban quarter at Poundbury. Now the Government says that Poundbury will be the model for next generation of new towns. Quite a vindication!
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    Hugo Gye
    @HugoGye
    Sep 26, 2025
    12 new towns will be based on the King's Poundbury development, @RichardVaughan1 reveals: inews.co.uk/news/politics/…
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Oct 10, 2022
    Urban perfection of its kind in Haarlem. Mixed use, narrow streets, high plot coverage. Abundant street greenery, cars minimised, social life spilling into public spaces. Brick paving, wall-mounted lighting, no redundant markings. Simple Dutch vernacular classical architecture.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Jan 18, 2023
    A testament to the intense civic pride of the Victorians, that this seemed to them the approriate way to treat a municipal lamp post.
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    Samuel Hughes
    @SCP_Hughes
    Aug 24, 2021
    A street in Poitiers, 2013 and 2020. Observe the profound change that paving in a local stone works on the character of the place. Another example of that care for the fabric of their towns for which France is so distinguished among nations.
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