Plans could make Milsom Street bland

Yesterday I looked for the first time at the latest plans to reconfigure Milsom Street and the surrounding area.

While some parts are undoubtedly excellent, there’s a danger one of Europe’s most elegant shopping streets could be turned into the most sterile, pedestrianised shopping mall of the sort that has totally destroyed historic centres up and down the land.

I am sure this has been conceived with the best will in the world but Bath has a unique, precious aesthetic: identikit urban design playbooks really don’t work.

Milsom Street has already been

subjected to scrubby, inappropriate plants, ugly road reconfiguring and random bits of jarring apparatus.

The addition of the hilariously over-ordered Voi scooters littering the place has only added to things: whatever their practical or environmental merits, they’re unbelievably tatty bits of kit.

This is surely a fabulous opportunity to make Milsom Street beautiful again; let’s make sure it doesn’t turn into yet another bland, characterless high street with street food.

Oliver Hylton Wellsway, Bath