Oak Street. Acacia Grove. Orchard Way. These are all streets in my local area⌠and probably in yours as well. And this has to stop.
Tree theme naming is the final vestige of the toponymically bankrupt planner: the man with no connection to his local area, who hasnât an original bone in his body, and who has a pathological fear of causing even the slightest offence or puzzlement to anyone else. The famous roads of Britain â Oxford Street, Northumberland Street, Watling Street, the Great North Road â all have characteristic, descriptive names which reflect their environsâ history. Not so for the pedestrian Elm Streets of the world.
Perhaps this is a uniquely British sickness. In America, they prefer a neurotic obsession with rectilinear grids and similarly plain street names â Main Street, Second Avenue, Fourth Street, and so on until the end of the world â while the Netherlands, where i grew up, is home to a positive cornucopia of diversity in road toponymy. In Almere alone â a planned city with no local history to speak of, the optimum place to give up and resort to arboreal laziness â there are districts themed after musicians (Jimi Hendrixstraat), fruits (Ananasstraat), Gods (Donarstraat), even particle physics (Elementendreef). But in England? Nothing but trees, baby!
We need a complete and immediate moratorium on naming streets in the UK after trees. The urban planners of this perfidious isle would be well-served to do some actual research into the local area, and where that fails, grow a creative bone in their body â for the good of the ordinary citizens of this great isle.
