Townscapes

*Illustrated. 60 pages. Available as .pdf
 
Roger Burnett’s townscape sketches begin with his native town of Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire and end with the towns and villages of his adopted Caribbean. Between the two he takes a brief sojourn to Portugal and revisits Birmingham’s restored canal-scape. His lively sketches were made from the pavements and capture the essence of townscapes at their best. The book ends with a series of essays that express the author’s concern about the present trend in Caribbean townscapes.

 
…One significant aspect of Dominica’s cultural identity is being largely ignored: that being, the built environment…A repetitive high-density housing scheme might be the solution for city dwellers but not for relocating rural communities… In your grandparent’s day, very little time would have been spent attending meetings, but more time would have been spent on doing the job. Practical solutions are more likely to be developed by a skilled man at the work bench rather than a collective at a meeting…Villages and townships tend to grow of their own accord over a long period of time. There was seldom a pre-determined master plan. The people and their dwellings fitted into the topography of the land: they had to, because in earlier times there was no heavy earth moving equipment to make significant changes. When these settlements are viewed from the air or on a map, it seems that our forefathers had a great contempt of straight lines and regularity…