Dr. Pat Taylor

While the text specifies problems of information overload and visual clutter along public thoroughfares, it also uses scientific data regarding human perceptions and speed scale to identify solutions to problems associated with physical development along public rights-of-way.  These include poorly designed parking systems, dangerous egress and access to public and private properties, overhead power lines that should be underground, inadequate use of performative landscapes, and drivers facing too many choices while having to navigate complex metropolitan corridors.

The work became a “game changer” in the way communities embraced signage ordinances, right-of-way design, public landscaping, and the absorption of information affecting street walls, streetscapes, and public safety.   It became one of the first how-to documents to be commonly used by public, private and academic practitioners in landscape architecture and planning. 

The 16 mm film that followed used free-hand graphics and sequential drawings to do what is done today through digital animation, allowing users to visually move through a typical street scene, and then retrace the route under newly designed conditions.  The film is a historic link between conceptualization and application within a particular professional practice niche of planning and landscape architecture.