Spurtle's front-page story in Issue 198 ('Edinburgh World Heritage Endangered?') has met with a mixed response from Edinburgh World Heritage (EWH) itself.
A spokesman contacted us on Friday, blenching a little at our red-blooded assessment of the challenges facing the Trust in months to come and the reasons for it issuing an online survey. Whilst acknowledging that the questionnaire had emerged against a background of public funding cuts for EWH (as for many other organisations), he was at pains to clarify that the sky is not about to fall in.
The survey has been organised in collaboration with the Warsaw School of Economics (Warsaw, too, enjoys UNESCO World Heritage status), and will run in the Polish capital as well. Whereas 'warm, fuzzy' measures of public approval have been made in the past (interesting old architecture is a good thing and pleasant to live beside), this marks a new effort to gauge people's more hard-headed assessments of World Heritage's economic value and the proper extent of public expenditure to preserve it.
EWH are, however, unequivocally pleased about any attention the survey receives. They want at least 1,000 responses from the public in order for their findings to be credible and robust, and urge all Spurtle readers to take part. If you live in Edinburgh, click here. If you work or run a business in Edinburgh, click here.
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