[SebC]

To add to my earlier musings...

Spoiler!

Originally Posted by SebC

Seems obvious, but what this and the blue ring have in common are they're done for highways. Maybe we need a different approach to highway beautification - perhaps landscaping? Or maybe we should simply divert the funds into public art for pedestrian spaces and parks?

I would love to see good examples of highway beautification anywhere that we could emulate (other than the Glenmore fish, and stuff like the Arche de Triomphe). Otherwise, maybe we should accept that a highway will look about as a good as it can merely through billboard restrictions.

I actually rather like some of our roads. Because they're not surrounded by trees, there are some pretty sweet views of downtown that a lot of cities can't match - sometime underneath awesome skies. Maybe that's what we should be focusing on. Would a nice roadside turnout be a better attraction than an art piece? Could we find a way to soundproof that doesn't turn the road into a tunnel? Should we be designating view corridors?

Another thought is that stuff that arches over the road seems to have a lot more visual impact. But that might be outside what our budgets allow. It could be a 'go big or go home' situation - the stuff we get doesn't have enough weight to shine over a highway, but stuff with more substance is costly.