Building magazine is 180 years old this year. What lessons about the built environment should we take from the past?

When The Builder was first published all those years ago, ‘Railway mania’ was taking hold, urban populations were booming, terraced houses were springing up in cities across the country, even steel framed high-rises were beginning to appear.

Much of the building stock created in the interim, while still standing in many cases, is no longer fit-for-purpose because we simply didn’t have the knowledge that we do now.

Futureproofing towns and cities involves guesswork, but it’s so important to ensure we’re not setting up the next generation for a fall. We need to look at the direction of travel and deliver a built environment which anticipates the needs of tomorrow, a concern that wasn’t front of mind 180 years ago…

Who or what has had the most positive impact on construction in the past couple of decades?