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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Ad-Hoc Urban Signage

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Tom at Fire in the Brain recently told a story of some guerilla signage with longevity in his community:

Last spring someone affixed a hand-written sign to a lightpost at the intersection of Fellowship Road and Church Street. I thought to myself “I better get a picture of that before it gets taken down, there’s no way the town’s going to leave that up there.” I never did take that picture, and the never did take down the sign. It stayed all through the winter, even after the writing had faded away. This spring the sign was upgraded to a laminated computer print out. It was obvious that the sign was here to stay.

On the one hand it’s nice to see people taking an issue like this into their own hands. On the other hand, if the authorities haven’t taken the sign down, why haven’t they addressed the poor wayfinding issue with an “official” sign? Perhaps it has gone unnoticed by authorities, though that seems hard to believe since the sign has been up for a year.

(via BoingBoing)

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One comment

  1. I’m not sure I like the idea of the sign being replaced with an “official” sign. Sure, it might be more functional, but here’s a great example of the public taking ownership of its space in the absence of municipal meddling.