Traffic, its impacts and public attitudes - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 53

3.7 Visual intrusion
For most people streams of traffic or seas of parked cars are not in themselves objects
of beauty. Only rarely are highways or other transport engineering structures regarded
as the source of visual satisfaction and a positive contribution to the urban scene.
The paraphernalia of ancillary items associated with highway operation and traffic
management (lighting columns, direction signs, traffic lights, bus passenger shelters
etc.) to varying degrees almost always presents an unsightly clutter.
As with the other types of impact the significance of visual intrusion depends very
much on its context, although in this case the damage inflicted is more aesthetic
and affects well-being and 'quality of life' rather than physical health or safety. The
main concerns are areas of town or country which have been designated for their
architectural or historic value (i.e. as conservation areas or historic monuments) or for
their landscape value (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty - AONBs - or National
Parks). Here and elsewhere the sense of visual despoilation may be aggravated by noise
and by the jarring speed of fast-moving or large vehicles.
The trend of redistributing main traffic flows, especially HGVs, has usually created
opportunities to improve the visual environment of town and village centres without
countervailing losses. However the Okehampton (A30) and Newbury (A34) bypasses
were celebrated examples where the environmental damage caused to the neighbouring
landscape was held by many to undermine the case for the scheme, notwithstanding
the attempts of engineers and landscape architects to integrate the new structures.
In proposing alignments for new roads, attempts are made similarly to avoid
ecological sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). However, as with community
severance in built-up areas, the insertion of barriers within the landscape inhibiting
the movement of flora and fauna may weaken the viability of local habitats (although
motorway and railway embankments may also flourish as unofficial linear nature
reserves!). The physical subdivision of otherwise 'unspoiled' landscape also contributes
to the loss of tranquil areas noted previously. These contextual features mean that the
significance of highway development is much greater than the simple figure of loss
of greenfield land would imply (9,000 hectares in the decade to 2004 as reported in
Transport Trends).
Whilst public attention is focused on places where the impact of traffic or transport
structures is especially damaging there is also a more general creeping destruction
of urban quality, famously christened 'subtopia' (Nairn 1957). This arises not so
much from the effects of traffic and highways in themselves as from the character
of development they tend to spawn. Contemporary manifestations are large retail
warehouses or scattered office blocks in 'business parks' surrounded by acres of surface
car parking with little connection, visually or functionally, with their surrounding
neighbourhoods. The design of many modern, higher density housing developments is
also often dominated adversely by the requirement to provide extensive parking space
within sight of individual dwellings. However these unfortunate trends have generated
their own backlash and there have been important initiatives recently to reassert the
value of urban quality even in 'mundane' situations such as the average high street or
housing estate (14.7).