Why beauty belongs at the heart of sustainable urban development

I get it: suggesting today that beauty should play a greater role in designing and delivering our built environment might feel like quibbling over wallpaper while the house is on fire. After all, we are living in extraordinary times. In an era defined by spiralling construction costs, squeezed public budgets and profound political and economic uncertainty, stakeholders are charged with delivering desperately needed housing, shoring up ageing infrastructure, steering sustainable mobility, adapting our cities to the realities of climate change and accommodating new technologies and economies.

Given the sheer scale and urgency of these and other challenges, which all demand swift, decisive action, it’s hardly surprising that considerations beyond immediate functionality and cost – questions about the kind of places we want to build and the values they embody – often fall by the wayside or are even openly deprioritised by those in power. Take Berlin’s mayor, for example, who recently advocated a, quote, “square, practical, good” approach to public construction, prioritising volume, speed and cost‑efficiency, or Germany’s newly introduced “BauTurbo” law which aims to accelerate housing delivery by cutting corners on established planning processes but has been criticised for risking to sacrifice architectural, social and environmental ambitions in the name of expediency.

It's easy to see where this logic comes from: in a time of limited resources and pressing needs, it appears to be a pragmatic response. And yet, I would argue that this way of thinking is flawed and ultimately undermines the very idea of truly “sustainable” urban development that so many decision-makers profess to support.

Beauty: Elusive, contested – and essential

Making the case for giving greater attention to beauty is undoubtedly complicated by the concept’s notoriously elusive and contested nature. As in other domains, definitions of “beauty” in the built environment are difficult to pin down – so much so that some argue it is merely a matter of personal taste. Complicating matters are persistent misconceptions, chief among them the dismissal of beauty as surface aesthetics: a “nice to have” with little bearing on societal well-being, or worse, an indulgent distraction that diverts attention from pressing issues such as housing affordability and infrastructure provision. In reality, while personal preference plays its part, the idea that beauty is nothing more than in the “eyes of the beholder” is a convenient excuse for treating it as trivial – which it is not – while the invoked divide between beauty and necessity is an artificial one. After all, it takes neither elaborate theory nor specialist expertise to recognise that beauty and necessity are not mutually exclusive.

Indeed, while beauty takes many forms and appears in all kinds of settings, it often arises, as Matthew Kieran suggests, “when we respond to our practical needs with imagination and integrity.” Moreover, there is a strong case to be made that beauty – when conceived not as decoration but as the thoughtful shaping of environments that speak to our cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic needs and desires – can and should be understood as a vital human need in its own right.

Research consistently demonstrates that beautiful, well-designed spaces correlate with improved health outcomes, enhanced quality of life, and stronger community bonds. And it debunks the long-standing myth that beauty and functionality are somehow at odds, invoking the former would be something one would have to, and in times of financial constraint often could not, afford. The real question is not whether we can afford to build beautifully, but whether we can afford not to – and evidence overwhelmingly suggests we cannot. Not only because, as argued above, beauty is not incidental but fundamental to human flourishing, but also because the absence of it – as experience repeatedly shows – tends to produce places that are neither practical nor sustainable. After all, environments devoid of care, character, and quality often become underused, unloved, and neglected, which can ultimately lead to disinvestment and the need for costly interventions down the line – interventions that could have been avoided if more care, thought and ambition had been invested from the outset.

Beauty doesn’t belong to any one tradition

The question of beauty in the built environment is a notoriously fraught one and frequently approached without the nuance it both deserves and demands. A great deal of debate continues to revolve around what exactly constitutes beauty, what our buildings and public spaces should look like, and which design approaches are best equipped to deliver it. Particularly prominent in recent years has been the rise of increasingly vocal proponents of neotraditional and historicist architecture, who deride modern and contemporary design tout court as soulless, alienating, and devoid of beauty.

A wealth of examples worldwide, from thoughtful small-scale interventions to ambitious large-scale projects, meanwhile makes clear that beauty is not the preserve of any one style, tradition or formal vocabulary and that instead of indulging in endless disputes over stylistic orthodoxy – let alone trying to legislate or codify beauty – the real imperative is creating conditions where the best solution emerges for each space or setting at stake, yielding outcomes that are not only functional but meaningful, cherished, and capable of lifting spirits instead of draining them.

A crucial prerequisite for this is that those in positions of influence recognise beauty for what it is: not an “add-on”, but an integral component of sustainable, healthy, and liveable environments – one that demands attention not only in major, high-profile projects but in every intervention that affects the built environment. However marginal a measure may appear, every stretch of paving, every piece of street furniture carries with it the capacity to either contribute to or diminish the quality of the built environments we inhabit. As a minimum, we should ensure that such interventions do no harm – and better yet, foster a mindset in which every intervention, however small, is understood as an opportunity to make our everyday surroundings a little better than before.

This, of course, also applies to the kinds of measures demanded by the green transition and to future-proof cities – urban water management systems, flood defences, new mobility corridors, energy infrastructures, you name them. It is a fact that efforts to build resilience and enhance sustainability frequently encounter local resistance, especially when the measures in question are seen as alienating, disruptive and as diminishing the quality of the spaces people inhabit and care about. What follows from this is that attending to the aesthetic and experiential dimensions of such interventions – not just to their cost and functional efficacy, but to how they look, feel, and perform as elements of everyday urban life – is also paramount from a strategic perspective. For while it may not guarantee success, it increases the odds of winning public support and avoiding the kinds of conflicts that so often delay or derail the vital but often contested changes the times we live in demand.

Raising the bar together

Of course, many stakeholders do recognise this, as countless inspiring projects from around the world demonstrate. Take, for example, Copenhagen's Sankt Kjelds Square and Bryggervangen project, a pioneering cloudburst adaptation initiative that has transformed 34,900 square meters of grey, heavily trafficked infrastructure into a fully climate-adapted, biodiverse green “lung” with 586 new trees, surface water management systems, and generous public spaces that demonstrate how climate resilience measures can enhance urban ecosystems and enrich everyday urban life. Or consider Hamburg’s Niederhafen flood protection barrier – a popular waterfront promenade designed by Zaha Hadid Architects that combines critical flood defence infrastructure with public spaces, cafes, and viewing terraces. In Central London, tulip-shaped bollards have meanwhile sprung up in a bid to separate traffic from cyclists and add a little joy and colour to the streetscape, while Milan’s CityWave project, conceived by BIG|Bjarke Ingels Group and now nearing completion, combines one of the world's largest urban photovoltaic installations with new public spaces beneath an architecturally striking canopy offering both shelter and shade. And this is without mentioning the wealth of bottom-up initiatives that emerge wherever people are given – or seize – the opportunity to shape their surroundings: the self-made seating areas, citizen-led street art projects, the guerrilla gardens and community-led greening campaigns, reminding us that the cultivation of beauty is by no means solely the domain of grand projects or formal policy, but thrives above all where communities are empowered to act, intervene, and express themselves on their own terms.

It would be wrong, therefore, to suggest that everything is doom and gloom. Indeed, in many places, there’s a growing awareness of the importance of beauty, design, and public experience in shaping the built environments we inhabit, and many extra-local actors and organisations too are doing their part to push the issue further up the political and professional agenda. Among them is the European Commission, which, in launching the New European Bauhaus alongside the European Green Deal, set out to help imagine and build a future that is not only sustainable and inclusive, but beautiful as well. Crucially, however, such a future cannot be imposed from above or brought about by any one single actor. It requires all hands on deck – from government and business to civil society and communities alike. And to make this happen, one paradox is worth hammering home again and again: in an age of unprecedented affluence and capability, our built environments all too often remain poor in ambition and delivery – and that poverty impoverishes us all.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.