PUBLIC DISCUSS SOLUTIONS TO MAJOR PROBLEMS
Earlier this week, the Cockburn Association held the second of a potential five Soapbox Sessions in which members of the public consider and comment on a variety of important challenges facing Edinburgh: ‘Our Unique City’.
The aim is to gauge opinion in advance of the Council’s consultation in December, which will inform a new strategic City Plan 2030 for the coming decade.
Wednesday evening’s event was themed around ‘The Heritage City’, and set against the background of an earlier discussion document available as a pdf at the foot of this article (pp. 22–24).
Introduction
The event began with an introduction by chair Cliff Hague, who outlined Edinburgh’s remarkable economic growth marked by expanding higher education and mass tourism, and the absence of a declining industrial base.
Edinburgh is the strongest growth centre in Scotland, yet faces problems – not least in providing genuinely affordable housing, preserving the best of the city centre, and managing a drastic decline in high-street retail.
How to explain a hollowing-out
Justine Gordon-Smith – a former Old Town resident and now Edinburgh University PhD student – next presented extracts from her research and film making.
She highlighted the latest and most severe displacement of the city’s disadvantaged. Causes she identified included:
- the collapse of social housing (from 85% of total stock in late 1970s to 6% now) following right-to-buy legislation
- invasive ‘hypertourism’
- a service economy replacing the capital’s traditional brewers, artists, and printers
- inflated land values replacing production as creators of wealth.
The result, she argued, has been the creation of a transient city lacking homegrown culture. Dispersed communities have led to a loss of civic values.
Public opinions
At this point, members of the c.50-strong audience pitched in with ideas and observations. We summarise and conflate drastically below.
- Leith is going the same way as the Old Town. Loss of physical links to its own heritage. Corrosive sale of public land and rise of buy-to-lets.
- Council wrongly prioritises business and students over creating a sense of place.
- A need for renewed focus on high-quality sustainable development not numbers and scale. Cookie-cutter architecture lacks identity and accountability to local needs.
- Pervasive squalor and clutter. Loss of a sense of ‘public good’.
- Redressing imbalances might start with community-led initiatives, but tsunami of tourism cannot be survived without leadership from Holyrood elected members. Almost unanimous agreement that chronic failure to manage tourism is a major problem. Most profits from tourism leave the city. Tax the profit-takers, not the tourists.
- Local concentrations of student numbers are bad for resident communities. Stretched Council is poor at enforcing its own guidelines and regulations.
- Use rent control to restore communities, and usage controls to protect light industry and retail.
- Public space is being monetised for private gain: (a) Intense irritation at disruption caused by filmmaking with insufficient financial compensation for the city; (b) Commercialisation of personal space – PLACE campaigners outlined 5-point push-back against short-term lets; (c) Parks being transformed into revenue generators.
- Remaining city-centre residents need support. Need to prioritise housing over mixed-use development. (Hague argued that enough planning consents exist to fix housing shortage, but developers wait years for most profitable market conditions.)
- Council is favouring commercial over local interests. Lack of fairness and equity. Sense of impotence, particularly after recent watering-down of the new Planning Act.
What next?
One person at the end of the meeting criticised the format for not encouraging networking among the disaffected. This struck the Spurtle as misplaced, but could partially be addressed by (with consent) circulating contact details of those present afterwards.
We look forward to the next Soapbox Session, loosely scheduled for the autumn. For Spurtle coverage of the inaugural event in June, see HERE.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle
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