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Unfortunately I think Sarah misses the point in regards to commitment from local authorities. They are committed financially, but fail to get the level of design standard they invest in. Martha’s, saints or whores analogy is observant but crude at best, public spaces and our treatment of landscape are neither. At best I would say lazy and at worst gimmick laden and sold on graphic representation. This I believe is down to the design itself. Take London for instance, with exception to the wonderful parks of city, public spaces between offices pose themselves as mere after thoughts. Transitional spaces between entrances, they are at best full of passersby and at worst desolate. Observations on the ways in which people appropriate places are missing. Poor liminal conditions that fail to even study or grapse why people sit in places, what they like to do. This only highlights our disregard for the life between buildings as something that comes at the end of surround spaces with these mini-statement office hives. What we are left with is overdesigned, novel / patterning of public spaces, water features that make unwanted noise or fill full of dirt and waste, uncomfortably seating and worst of all undesirable spaces to sit and rest. What is missed is that public spaces can offer sanctuary or healing possibilities, rest or merely a space to people watch. They don't have to have eccentric wobbly surfaces, or brightly finished with odd and extravagant street furniture, but merely begin and end with the observation of the people they are for.