There is a telling illustration in the government’s long-awaited Living With Beauty report.

It contains two aerial photographs. The first is of the Italian city of Siena, with its famous central square – which Jan Gehl considers one the world’s finest public spaces – surrounded by narrow twisting streets. It’s the kind of place it would be hard not to agree is beautiful.

The second is an aerial view of a motorway junction in Houston, Texas. The curving lanes have their own beauty when observed from above, but you don’t need great imaginative powers to know that it would be a horrible place for coffee with your neighbours.

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