In the town where I grew up, between Tesco, Home Bargains and the Job Centre, there’s a place called The Palmer-Morewood Memorial Club. In the car park of the club is a hand-painted sign that says ‘PRIVATE PARKING’ or there was when I was very young – at some point since the mid-nineties all of the paint on it literally fell off, but for years my memory filled in the gaps and made the blank wooden sign mean something. Eventually someone took the sign away but I find it hard to picture that car park without it. It’s actually quite easy to see what you think something looks like rather than what is really there.
I’ve found myself in a similar situation recently with my adopted home of Cardiff. Working for a business improvement district naturally encourages a person to look more closely at their surroundings and so when I moved back here in 2017 there were plenty of things I noticed that would have passed me by when I was originally here as a student. I’d accumulated several years’ experience of BID life in the interim and suddenly bins and pavements and lamp columns were of peak interest to me. Since then I’ve taken my place observational skills up another notch as FOR Cardiff start to really think about the look and feel of the city beyond the additional street cleaning and summer planting.
What do you think looks great until you really look at it? What bits of Cardiff are missing a trick? Is there anything that’s falling a part a little but you keep seeing it as if it’s good as new? What needs taking down and what needs putting up? What signs are pointing in the wrong direction? What signs say something in English that’s different to what they say in Welsh?! The more eyes on the operation the more likely we are to spot those sneaky hidden flaws so if there’s anything about the city that has been niggling away in the back of your mind why not let us know.