AMOENITAS SALUBRITAS URBANITAS

The town’s motto dates from the incorporation as Ryde Borough in 1868. It can certainly be read as meaning, ‘A Healthy, Beautiful Place’, but its phrasing, deliberately ambiguous, allows for another interpretation, ‘A Community That Celebrates A Healthy and Beautiful Way of Living’. This subtle shift between place and person, between the quality and resilience of the town’s architecture and public realm, and the wellbeing of those who inhabit it, seems as pertinent now as it must have done then, at another time of great political and social turmoil. It was an acclamation that demanded, and promised, inspiring vision, effective partnership and practical action for change.