templar – Page 13 – Abbeylands Residents

Form an association of residents

A primary motivation for setting up a residents association might be to organise and articulate the residents’ perspective, which to my mind has long been neglected on Dunbar High Street. Tenants and Residents Associations typically:

keep residents informed of the issues affecting their area
campaign on local issues e.g. be it litter, antisocial behaviour or anything else
act as a sounding board for development proposals, preferably before they are drawn up
represent residents’ views to the local council / community council / business associations
organise, social, leisure or educational activities
get involved with area based schemes such as the Community and Police Partnership
join with other residents groups to discuss issues of common concern

Continue reading Form an association of residents

Provide better litter facilities on street

A staggering 40% of litter is related to cigarette smoking, not just cigarette stubs, but the cellophane wrappers and silver foil and the packets too. That is 200 million stubs daily which is 122 tonnes across the UK! At a local level, I’d say that 100% the High Street sites I survey on any one day contain smoking related litter. Until I had a chat with my local Co-op manager, there were significant problems there, which he has helpfully started to address. With the advent of the smoking ban I’ll bet there has been a marked increase of discards on our pavements and streets near you too.

Repair pavements and crossings

1-DSC_0106 — What happens to the street scene when you remove the cars?

One of the defining characteristics of the Dunbar streetscene are the relatively wide pavements along with the cobbled sets that accent the pavement edges, pattern the parking bays and, until recently, framed the pedestrian crossings. The street scheme is relatively new, and possibly, with the exception of the exaggerated lighting scheme which is unnecessarily bright at night, it has helped to enhance the streetscene, at least superficially. A good thing surely?

Well the parking scheme largely cancels out the aesthetic benefits and the quality of the views are much reduced, obscuring the positive characteristics and poor maintenance over the years is not helping. But using the natural / built characteristics of our high street can we start to re-imagine Dunbar, perhaps as a ‘market town’ and destination?

I can already visualise the brown signs saying something like “Dunbar – Historic Town and Harbour”. This seems to be what is happening up and down the country, but why not have some of this here?

Establish trees on Dunbar High Street

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.’
Anonymous

With heaps of published evidence that trees provide multiple benefits to people and the environment, especially in urban settings you’d think our streets would be choking with them. Street trees seem to me to be on the decline in many of our towns (blame cutbacks and poor cultural practices), with garden trees being removed to make space for cars at an alarming rate. And, in case some of you are thinking that trees simply will not grow on our High Street there are well established cultural practices and design principles to achieve excellent results. If you do it wrong of course the results will be disappointing, as are trees grown in tubs. In the long run trees could be cheaper than establishing and maintaining annually bedding plants and the hanging baskets which used to adorn our lamp posts, but which give only very transient pleasure.

Here’s an expert view: