Aesthetics and the urban road environment

Abstract

Traffic planning involves aesthetic issues that impinge on people's daily lives. Roads and traffic have an appreciable effect on the environment, not just through noise and pollution but also through their visual impact on users and non-users alike. So far, it is the tangible effects of transport on the environment—noise, pollution and severance—that have occupied the attention of researchers in the transport field. In this paper, the authors explore some of the less tangible aspects that cannot be expressed in quantitative terms. They focus on two main issues: the role of aesthetics in traffic furniture and vehicle design (does their appearance matter?), and aesthetic principles that might enable vehicles and traffic furniture to relate more closely to the urban landscape. The paper begins with a discussion of what might be termed the aesthetic disruption generated by traffic hardware within the visual environment: street clutter and the aggressive shapes of vehicles accentuated by light reflections from hard metallic surfaces. The authors then attempt to draw out some basic principles that might be applied to the design of vehicles, highways, and street furniture in order to ease the visual clash between transport hardware and the urban landscape. Some suggestions are made for improvement, including the ‘internalisation’ of traffic signs and signals so that drivers receive information via head-up displays rather than on-street hardware, an innovative approach to car body design, partial de-regulation of traffic signs regulations together with ‘aesthetic audits’, and the use of geographical information systems and virtual reality as management tools in order to curb the proliferation of street furniture.