‘Tame’ wide British roads and replace them with boulevards of homes, says thinktank

Artist’s impression of how St Mary’s Gate, Rochdale, could look with a narrower junction and more housing. Photograph: Robert Kwolek

Needlessly wide roads should be torn up and replaced with boulevards of new housing, a thinktank led by the UK government’s most senior urbanism adviser has proposed, in a move likely to delight green belt campaigners but rile the motoring lobby.

Create Streets wants sweeping T-junctions tightened, vast roundabouts “tamed” and expressways narrowed according to a paper to be circulated to ministers and seen by the Guardian.