Cities Need a Chief Beauty Officer

Appointing a statutory municipal role whose remit is to audit, coordinate and champion urban aesthetics — from streetscapes and public buildings to procurement and signage — to ensure design quality is central to planning and regeneration decisions. The officer would have powers to influence planning briefs, public‑works contracts and civic design codes to reverse decades of ad hoc, uglifying choices. — Treating beauty as an explicit public policy objective reframes debates over regeneration, housing, planning and local legitimacy and creates a concrete institutional lever to change long‑run civic outcomes.