Why are most British houses so badly designed?

I know a lot of people will disagree with me here, but I don't care. It seems to me that when I think of British houses, I think of the majority of post-war houses-ugly brick boxes with plastic windows, no storage, bad plumbing, badly designed wiring and little to no ventilation, surrounded by hideous brown fences and pokey little gardens. And for variety, we have 'pebble dashing', fake concrete tiles and magnolia rendering. Why are British houses like that? And why do developers still build houses like that? I have a love for American houses-crisp white timber beauties with huge basements, 3 floors, industrial heating systems, storage galore, pretty sash windows and white picket fences. For starters, you'd of thought that in a country as small as Britain, houses would try to make best use of space by digging basements and building 3 storeys, but we don't. If someone says it's just because bricks are cheap in this country, I don't believe it... building a timber frame building is much cheaper, quicker, environmentally friendly, thermally efficient and far more flexible. Like many things, is it just a social thing~people get used to the way things have 'always been done' and replicate them regardless of their flaws, or is it a historical thing~did the 2nd world war mean that the country needed to just build mes of houses as cheaply and unimaginatively as possible using whatever materials we could dig up, and it just took on... forever? It does my head in how nothing ever gets better, and how I can take a train journey across the country and see rows and rows of identical hideous mock-georgian houses blotting the landscape.