Edinburgh World Heritage and the Built Environment Forum Scotland will hold a ‘Heritage Hustings’ tomorrow evening (see poster below).
The event will take place in St Stephen’s Church from 6pm–8pm, and include on the panel two local candidates in the 4 May election: Jo Mowat (Con, City Centre) and Nigel Bagshaw (Grn, Inverleith).
For background context, readers may be interested in following this link to the Old and New Towns Edinburgh World Heritage Site Draft Management Plan, 2017–22 (consulting until 5 June) or this one to the Cockburn Association’s Civic Agenda for Edinburgh.
The latter draws from a lecture by Cockburn chair Cliff Hague published by the Spurtle in November 2016. It argues that cherishing the capital’s landscape, townscape and architecture is crucial for Edinburgh’s future ‘benign’ growth.
‘We are stewards not owners of this exceptional place; we have a duty to care for it, not auction it off bit by bit. The current priority given to short-term economic development risks long-term wellbeing and prosperity.’
It lists nine action points for the Council to follow:
- Connect schools and colleges with civil society to co-produce and implement neighbourhood plans.
- Work with communities to identify and equip new areas for commercial development.
- Work with housing providers and communities to set ambitious environmental and social targets in new developments.
- Work with the building industry to care for and maintain older housing stock, deliveering jobs in the process.
- Stimulate innovation in Edinburgh’s key strengths: tourism, financial services, education, urban conservation.
- Listen to communities. Devolve budgets for street cleaning/maintenance to community-level organisations.
- Integrate and share information – no more ‘commercial sensitivity’ gagging clauses.
- Think global, act local: ‘Make cities and human settlements safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable’.
Tuesday’s hustings is a free event, although prebooking is encouraged via this Eventbrite link.
