Public art, wildflowers, grasslands and dune planting to enhance and soften a multi-million-pound active travel scheme could be introduced if councillors back the move next week.
A £100,000 commission for public art on the Broughty Ferry stretch of active travel route to Monifieth will be discussed by the city development committee which will also consider £135,000 of work on the scheme to ensure that the conservation objectives are met
Mark Flynn committee convener said: “It is clear that the active travel route serves a genuine, practical purpose but that does not mean that it should be purely functional.
“Public art and native planting, such as these proposals, created specifically and tailored for the location adds to the environment and helps to develop a sense of place.
“It was a condition of receiving the funding for the project that in addition to improvements for active travel, it should also help with placemaking, and a budget for public art and soft landscaping ‘green infrastructure’ was approved by Sustrans as part of its funding grant.”
A panel review of the six submissions received is recommending that a proposed work by Lee Simmons, details of which will be revealed later, be commissioned for Broughty Ferry Esplanade.
The award-winning British artist has already received praise for his tubular stainless-steel humpback whale, which forms the centrepiece of Dundee’s Waterfront Place.
Soft landscaping works will introduce a new native grassland management to the Broughty Ferry shoreline and help to re-establish dune grasses along the beach edge. This will add to the city’s existing nature network of green corridors and “stepping stones” for wildlife.
Dundee City Council
Dundee draws skilled workers from a 60-minute catchment population of 640,000 and has a local population of over 140,000. The availability of a large pool of highly skilled labour is a key feature in the Dundee economy. Flexibility in the labour force is currently more prevalent in Dundee than in Scotland as a whole. All forms of labour market flexibility - part-time, temporary employment, self-employment and shift work - are widely operational within the city. Labour force stability in the city is excellent, enabling companies to plan with confidence. Labour turnover levels are less than 5% and absenteeism averages 2%.
