If you walk down some of Manchester’s  major thoroughfares, and look above shopfront level, you’ll see some fine façades. Take Princess Street, for example, viewed from outside the Manchester Art Gallery. You take in a broad road, flanked on either side by ornate buildings, but with narrow pavements and so much street furniture that it is sometimes hard to see to the next junction: grey steel posts so numerous that basic quantifier “lots” is more than adequate; advertising signs that block half of the too-narrow pavement, squeezing pedestrians past each other; street signs so prolific that they compete for visibility; and a few pitiful trees, barely noticeable in the forest of signage.

But Princess Street is a fine street. Take away much of the street furniture, and especially the advertising signs, broaden the pavements, and Princess Street becomes a fine boulevard, enjoyable for pedestrians and road users alike, instead of the neglected thoroughfare that it currently is.