streets are places too: revealing the hidden assets, by colin davis

A first class presentation with some excellent examples of improved streetscapes. However it skates past the question of why, if it is so very simple to get it 'right', do so many local authorities permit the destruction of the street environment? It is all too easy to blame the highway engineer as the culprit (albeit that some are guilty as charged).

There are a multiplicity of factors and players forcing street clutter and the destruction of place on the streetscape. Some factors are internal to the highway design process such as the Safety Audit process; others are related but external to design such as the Council's insurers and legal advisors. But some are the public (and their elected representatives) themselves.

It is an unenviable experience to address a public meeting, especially in the wake of an accident, and be told that your failure to provide signs, fencing, lights markings etc were an 'accident waiting to happen'. Plainly work needs to be done to educate the designer (highways, planners, landscape) but a great deal of work needs to be done to educate the public at large that, in the catchphrase, 'less really is more'. Also, and perhaps more significantly, resources need to be deployed to defend legal actions brought by those who see an absence of 'safety' features as an opportunity to win financial gain from organisations that are reluctant to defend themselves in difficult circumstances.