AS our high streets take on the look of 1980’s war torn Beirut with boarded up shops left in the wake of the retail devastation, there is a big question facing our communities.

What’s to become of our town landscapes?

In the current economic climate, which those in the know say will be with us until at least the end of 2009 and probably on into early 2010, none but the extremely brave is likely to be launching a new business.

Logic dictates therefore that this unseemly and not very attractive scene of empty premises with piles of letters gathering dust behind their doors is likely to be with us for some time.

Indeed, High Wycombe was already slipping down this path with shops empyting out in White Hart Street and the High Street, some as a consequence of the Eden effect as they decamped into the new shopping centre.

Now there’s virtually no hope of those premises being filled and as the retail gloom thickens there is a distinct possibility of more businesses going under.

So what to do? After all we don’t want to give visitors the impression that our little town is a run down little dump do we?

Well I have a grand plan.

A few years ago I paid a visit to Rome for the first time and it shot to the list of my Top Favourite European Cities.

I came across a very interesting idea while visiting the Spanish Steps which links the Piazza di Spagna with the Piazza Trinita dei Monti up a steep slope, pictured here.

Apart from a drunk driver descending the steps in his Toyota Celica in June 2007 and artist Graziano Cecchini covering the steps in coloured balls in January this year to highlight the plight of the Karen people in Myanmar, the steps are well known for a particularly famous building.

It’s called the Casina Rossa, the Little Red House, and was where poet John Keats died of tuberculosis in 1821. It was also a meeting place with his contempories such as Byron and Shelley.

Now it is a museum in their memory, but unfortunately was closed when I was there as the building was undergoing a major refurbishment. However, as you would expect, the Italians do these things in style.

Instead of scaffolding, a half-painted building and boarded up windows being on view, the whole building had a protective sheet around it and painted up as the building would look when completed. It almost looked real.

And that’s the way – in Rome at least – the Italians deal with buildings under repair.

I’m sure you’re ahead of me at this point. So instead of us having to put up with decaying shopping areas we can have gaily painted frontages of cafes and classy stores and keep a few artists in work – as long as they don’t cover Frogmoor in coloured balls as a protest to the plight of bankers.