English Heritage, who a few months ago published a booklet and CD ROM as part of their 'Save our streets' campaign, are running a couple of seminars in the east midlands this friday, October 14th.
"Many towns and villages across the region have had their local distinctiveness eroded by an array of ugly and obtrusive traffic signs, posts and bollards that clutter our streets and a legacy of highways design solutions which are often unsuited to sensitive locations. English Heritage, in partnership with the Department for Transport (DfT), aims to generate a greater drive for transforming the poor appearance of our streets and bringing beauty and local distinctiveness back to our villages and towns.
"Two seminars are being held at Lincoln's Cathedral Centre and Newark Town Hall in Nottinghamshire, to ensure that good design and co-ordinated street management become the norm, not the exception."
I've not been able to track down any more info about this but try English Heritage for further details.
Can't disagree with this, the visual street furniture clutter in my local London streets is utterly depressing, and I counted 15 replicated signs recently on a half mile of Red Route. But what about the blanding down of our prime public buildings, including Libraries? New and costly library buildings are increasingly modelled on stores and supermarkets, with ugly "retail" frontages and signage. Why are we allowing all the potential local distinctiveness of our
public libraries to be eroded in this way?
More on Blanding of Libraries at
http://knowledgespacelibrary.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Angela Dove | Tuesday, 11 October 2005 at 00:10