Design in the High Street (Rfac Guide)

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Improving Design in the High Street

A Royal Fine Arts Commission Guide, Colin J Davis, Architectural Press. 1997

This booklet follows on from a line of guidelines that reflect the townscape ethic set by the Civic Trust. It promotes a form of sanitised environment that is both admirable and dispiriting. In a way this is no bad thing; but it reflects the common view of urban design as an extension of environmental improvement. Ten years ago the RFAC published Design in the High Street. It helped reinforce the role of town centre management. Since then we have seen many of the messages put forward accepted. Within the urban design profession they have become common parlance.

So who is this publication for? Its layout, easy language, understandable diagrams and photographs, point to it being a very useful primer that should go in every starter pack for every new member of a local authority transport and planning committee. The section headings illustrate the local problems to be found in all cities; tidying up car park entrances, signage, eliminating fly posters, specifying materials, reducing the impact of vacant shop fronts, planting trees and so on. No great statements, just simple messages that still need to be got across to local authorities, community groups, investors and developers. Checklists that identify quality objectives and actions that can be taken to achieve them, case studies that locate examples in their context with sketches, quotes, and contacts, all make the booklet accessible. It would have been helpful to have a reading list for those people wanting to know more, and a directory of organisations involved in urban design issues, and town centre management. Colin Davis, who recently produced the design guide for Brixton, has again provided us with a similarly useful product.

(This review was first published in Urban Design Quarterly 64, October 1997 and is reproduced with the Editor's kind permission)