2007 Yearbook

INSTITUTE OF HISTORIC BUILDING CONSERVATION YEARBOOK 2007 30 I N R E V I E W public realm is generally the highways department of the local authority: an actor more concerned with traffic flow and safety than with people’s personal, social and economic needs. ‘Highway clutter’ is most definitely a national problem, with the character of many historic urban and rural areas being steadily eroded through the mass application of standard highway solutions. In most cases this is unforgivable, as a bit of imagination would have made all the difference. To compound this problem, the road and paving materials used are seldom locally-derived, and street furniture fails to register local identity. The only compromise the highway engineers appear to make is in selecting products from the slightly more expensive ‘heritage range’ for which the citizens are supposed to be grateful. It is perhaps surprising to find that highway authorities have no obligation to consult the other public sector agencies working in the public realm. Furthermore, despite commonly citing intangible ‘regulations’ to back up the case for scarring an historic town with multi-coloured surfaces and a proliferation of signs, highway authorities have implausibly been empowered to write their own regulations, only making reference to national design guidance when it suits. In practice, a local conservation officer could spend years establishing a shopfront improvement scheme within a sensitive conservation area, carefully balancing public opinion with funding and regeneration issues, only to be thwarted by an unthinking highways department deciding to implement changes to the road system right at the heart of the historic town, with all the highways paraphernalia that entails, and with no obligation to consult the conservation officer. Highway schemes typically have far more impact on the appreciation of the historic environment than painstaking efforts to conserve individual buildings, to such an extent that attempts to conserve the historic significance of a town in such situations can be rendered fruitless. Some solutions In England, English Heritage has already published the concise and highly pictorial Streets for All regional manuals in conjunction with the Department for Transport. These manuals provide guidance to highway engineers on the very issues outlined above. Unfortunately, as with so much guidance of this nature it remains optional with no legislative incentive for adoption. To this end I am currently involved in producing a streetscape audit form to help civic societies campaign to their councillors. This audit form will be based directly on English Heritage’s excellent Streets for All guidance. The plan is to roll it out to civic societies across the nation, beginning with the North West of England via the regional association of Civic Trust societies. The English Historic Towns Forum is another great campaigner for historic streetscape conservation. Delegates at the recent annual conference hosted by Bury St Edmunds saw first hand what can be achieved through a healthy working partnership between planning and highway professionals. It can be done! Finally, the Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers (IHIE) is now offering a Professional Certificate in the Design and Management of the Public Realm to get engineers thinking about the wider urban design issues – see www.publicrealm.info . I wanted this article to be provocative, partly out of frustration but mainly to invite councils, planners and engineers to pick up the discussion by highlighting successfully delivered public realm schemes that can be used as exemplars for their fellow professionals. In the meantime the question remains unanswered as to why national and local government do not insist upon multi-disciplinary ‘public realm management teams’ for each district which must sanction all non-minor changes to the historic environment through holistic and informed decision making. Acknowledgements Thanks are due for their kind support to Karl Creaser, English Heritage NW Regional Policy Officer and Colin Davies of CJDA Ltd. However, the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. Further information For Streets for All guidance and the complementary Save our Streets Campaign information email saveourstreets@english-heritage.org.uk . Details of the IHIE Public Realm Professional Certificate, which seeks to address many of the highway-related issues discussed in this article, can be found at www.publicrealm.info . Before and after applying urban design principles to remove extraneous highway clutter (Photo: Colin Davies Associates)

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