Name and shame

My university is building what most people would call a new campus, usually known as 'North West Cambridge'.I am largely convinced that this is the right thing to do.There isn't enough space for a growing university in the town centre, and there is woefully not enough reasonably priced accommodation for graduate students or staff.

So I am therefore being tolerant about the fact that a large village-cum-small town is being built a few hundred yards up my road (nimby, moi?). That means 1500 homes for uni staff, 1500 private houses, accommodation for 2000 graduates students, a school, shops, hotel and a care home (that might come in useful one day), as well as more strictly uni stuff.

The university is, of course, being an aggressively responsible developer. The whole site is being archaeologically recorded, there is all the required public art planned, and it's as sustainable as anyone could dream of (cycleways all over the place). And the neighbours are being regularly kept informed with leaflets written in slightly over-enthusiastic tones about how exciting it all is.

 But, as usual, it is easier to get exercised about the relatively trivial than about the big picture (like how much extra exhaust etc will waft down our road). So I have been thinking about what all this is going to be called ���. I mean the new roads and streets and so on.

 Here it is a bit difficult to get a completely clear picture. The University���s own mouthpiece, The Reporter ��� now sadly only available online ��� had one very carefully worded statement last year announcing the good plan to name two of the new streets, after distinguished female scientists: Philippa Fawcett Drive and Ada Lovelace Road (I wonder how they decided who got the ���Drive��� and who got the ���Road���). It was a cheering start.

 But now the development���s own website has ideas that look a bit less attractive and includes some decidedly odd ideas (the strategy of choice is "based on principles of natural naming"... since when was naming "natural"?). Some of the places are to be named after areas of the farm that was there before all this stuff was built. There is to be a Brook Field, a Five Acres and Spinney Pasture. These might be all bona fide ancient names, but they do reek a bit of the Archers or fictitious Lymeswold cheese (remember?).

But rather more gloomy from my point of view is the proposal to name street after Cambridge Nobel Laureates, distinguished as they are. For that means Dorothy Hodgkin is the only lady among the Diracs, Huxleys and Ryles. And it means that Cambridge's humanities traditions dont get much of a look in. Where, for example, is James Frazer or the Leavises, or Jane Harrison... or Pepys for heaven's sake. Happily the suggestions sent in by "the local community" redress the balance a bit, and include for example Dorothy Garrod, the archaeologist. But I am sure we could do even better.