THREE weeks ago, I wrote about Craigmillar - for the think tank, Enlighten (here).

For the past year and a bit, I’ve been doing a bit of pro bono work there.

As I remarked, it’s been a life-enriching experience, and I’ve genuinely found the people and the place to be inspiring.

As a child, I’d be driven through Craigmillar with dad to visit ‘granny’ in Newcraighall.

Even then, with Craigmillar a relatively new entity, it looked tired. Meanwhile, visiting Newcraighall was like stepping back in time.

Roll forward to 1999 and I was the city council leader, and the regeneration of Craigmillar was a huge challenge.

The council had already been working with the local community to establish the Craigmillar Partnership and a formal delivery body, PARC (Promoting and Regenerating Craigmillar) was established in 2001.

PARC worked with the local community to create a masterplan that became one of Scotland’s largest regeneration projects.

The early work of PARC was run by one of the smartest and most consequential figures in Edinburgh’s modern economic renaissance, Ian Wall.

Ian was chief executive of the council’s property development company, EDI.

Importantly, the investment had extensive input from the local community. That masterplan formed the basis of around £200million of investment that has proven to be transformational.

For the article - and indeed also for a column I penned for the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper - I rattled off several statistics to make the case that Craigmillar is no longer the place of depressed and depressing mythology.

By any measure - including unemployment, educational attainment, home and car ownership, life expectancy, drug and alcohol misuse, average income and, importantly, crime - Craigmillar is a ‘good’ place to live, getting ‘better’ all the time.

That’s due, in no small part, by the local committed volunteers who have worked tirelessly to restore the area, such as the Craigmillar and Niddrie Litterbusters group, whose inspiring leader, Miranda Baird, was specifically praised by Prime Minister Keir Starmer when he last year launched the UK Government’s Pride in Place funding.

Organisations like Lyra, which is Scotland’s only performing arts venue for teenagers, is an amazing success.

Sandy’s Community Centre has been at the centre of huge success in tackling the anti-social behaviour that arose in the community on November 5.

And the Venchie is an adventure play facility where kids can be active in a safe and secure environment and can have some of the best experiences of their young lives.

Of course, Craigmillar still has its challenges, but - little by little - it is getting there.

But, in compiling my statistics, in trying to both verify and add to them, I couldn’t believe the ‘evidence minefield’ I was soon about to enter: using sources of information I already knew and also Artificial Intelligence (AI).

My first port of call was the Craigmillar Community Council boundary as set out on the city council’s website (here).

Depending on which source of information you use, or AI, it is possible to come up with several divergent statistics: for instance average household income for Craigmillar at £41,765 which seems to be at odds with the average for Scotland and the UK.

Meanwhile, the unemployment figure was given as 2.67 per cent for the Community Council area, which is difficult to reconcile with a Portobello/Craigmillar council ward figure of over five per cent in separate analysis of the same site.

Unemployment stats from the 1980s were easier to pin down and for that I am grateful to Ian Wall, for a copy of a District Council leaflet from the mid-1980s.

That showed the unemployment rate in Craigmillar and Niddrie was 25.3 and 24.1 per cent respectively, and describes the proportion of ‘long-term unemployed’ as 54.4 per cent and 53.3 per cent - much higher than the figure AI gave me.

When Ian handed me the leaflet my heart both sank (at how ‘bad’ it was all these years ago) and swelled with pride (at how far things have got so much better).

Population figures were similarly tricky to detail, with the Edinburgh council website figure of 22,939 much higher than the 16,500 figure I ended up using.

The difference is most likely the relatively new housing on the Edmonstone Ridge, which might be technically within the Community Council area, but is not what anyone thinks of as Craigmillar.

Some figures, however, were to tally between sources and AI calculation: especially higher education qualifications and car ownership.

The crime statistics were probably the hardest to get. To source police statistics, you must formally submit a Freedom of Information request. Especially hard to get are figures compiled before the relatively recent creation of Police Scotland.

And while the council does record crime figures per thousand residents by ward (and the figures for Portobello/Craigmillar show a drop by 23 per cent since 2018), there appears to be no long-term data to support what one hears anecdotally: that there’s been a huge reduction in crime and anti-social behaviour since the 1990s.

Which leads me to a single, over-arching conclusion: getting easily-accessible statistics on what is happening in our regeneration areas is tortuously difficult.

I remember once speaking at an European Mayors conference in London the secretariat for which was provided by the London School of Economics. I did wonder then why we couldn’t have such strong partnership links with universities and I still wonder it today.

Anyone seeking to understand the full impact of any regeneration effort in Craigmillar, and Scotland more widely, faces a patchwork of statistics - from various sources - that are just very hard to pin down.

We know the intricate details of microscopic processes in human cells, and we’ve studied the farthest reaches of the universe, but our knowledge of what goes on in our poorest communities is vanishingly small.

Our universities should be queuing up to help analyse and learn the lessons from such areas.

Regeneration costs money, often lots of money. If we aren’t able to measure exactly whether we are getting good value for that money, we are all losing out.

Donald Anderson is a former leader of Edinburgh’s city council and is a director of Playfair Scotland public affairs company.

Image details: White House, Craigmillar; copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• Provisional approval given to New Town Quarter, following appeal;

• ‘Urgent briefing’ agreed, to explain high schools’ alleged over-crowding;

• Scottish Widows building earmarked for ‘selective demolition’ and hotel;

• Three gold medals for Edinburgh entries in the architecture section of the Scottish Design Awards;

• City Plan 2040: call for ideas issued and ‘first stage’ completed;

• ‘Public realm improvement’ contract being advertised for St Andrew Square;

• Edinburgh named second most ‘beautiful’ city in the world;

• Over-tourism concerns raised in Edinburgh Evening News feature;

• Site news;

• Pentlands to Portobello path;

• Four Edinburgh buildings added to ‘at risk’ register;

• George IV Bridge scaffolding;

• ‘Eco-friendly’ flats proposal submitted for Fairmilehead;

• Uncertainty hangs over fate of city bridge;

• Call reportedly made for more space to be allocated to pedestrians;

• Cyclists feeling safer?;

• Concern raised about food delivery eBikes on cycle paths;

• Niddrie mural restored;

• The fightback against Dutch elm disease;

• Newhaven litter pick;

• Relocation scheduled for Reiach and Hall Architects;

• Reparation scheme clocks up just under 50,000 hours of ‘urban improvement’;

• Review of outdoor seating charges being called for by petition; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Provisional approval given to New Town Quarter, following appeal

PROVISIONAL approval has been given to a ‘mixed-use’ development - known as the New Town Quarter - at the bottom of Dundas Street that had been rejected by the city council amid concerns of over-provision of student accommodation.

The site - previously occupied by Royal Bank of Scotland offices - had been the subject of a planning application - here, ref: 25/01899/FUL - that had been refused in December by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee, as reported here, on BuildEdinburgh.

But the developers - local firm, Ediston - successfully appealed the decision with the Scottish Government.

Says the adjudication by the government’s Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA) - here: “The reporter is minded to grant permission subject to a legal agreement being reached. The final decision has therefore been deferred for the period detailed in the Notice of Intention to allow the conclusion of that agreement.”

Construction work is currently ongoing at the site: the residential (and affordable housing) element of the scheme.

The story is picked up by the Broughton Spurtle eNewsletter, here.

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‘Urgent briefing’ agreed, to explain high schools’ alleged over-crowding

CITY councillors have agreed that an ‘urgent briefing’ be pulled together to explain how alleged over-crowding issues, at two of Edinburgh’s most recently-built secondary schools, are going to be managed.

It follows an emergency motion submitted to the city council’s Education, Children and Families committee last week (here), that was accompanied by deputations from parent representation groups at James Gillespie’s and Boroughmuir high schools.

The motion read: “Committee agrees that this matter is urgent and requires immediate attention in advance of final staffing, timetabling and budget decisions for the 2026/27 academic year.

“Committee therefore requests: an urgent briefing within ten working days, involving senior officers, ward councillors, representatives of the Rising Rolls Working Group, and representatives of affected school communities, to provide a clear plan for managing school roll pressures in 2026/27 that includes: (1) Actions already agreed or in development; (2) Allocation of responsibilities for actions; and (3) A delivery timeline.”

The story has been picked up by The Scotsman’s Catriona Stewart, who writes, here: “Edin­burgh city coun­cil has been told that pres­sure on space at Bor­ough­muir and James Gillespie’s high schools has become so severe that some vul­ner­able chil­dren are refus­ing to attend due to how stress­ful they find the build­ing.”

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Scottish Widows building earmarked for ‘selective demolition’ and hotel

WHAT is being described as ‘selective demolition’ of the former Scottish Widows category A-lised building on Dalkeith Road, is being applied for - to make way for a hotel.

A planning application - here, ref: 26/02724/LBC - has been submitted, which says the distinctive hexagonal blocks that front Dalkeith Road will be retained.

The architects are ICA, and the story has been picked up by Urban Realm website, here.

It is understood this proposal doesn’t contain any student accommodation but retains the housing element contained in a previously-approved application (here, ref: 22/04768/LBC).

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Three gold medals for Edinburgh entries in the architecture section of the Scottish Design Awards

THREE Edinburgh entries in the architecture section of the Scottish Design Awards have been awarded gold medals.

In the Interior Design category, gold was secured for the transformation of a former engineering workshop on The Shore, in Leith, into the food and drink space, Brown’s of Leith.

Its designers are locally-based Gras, which also took silver in the Conservation category for its restoration of Preston Tower in East Lothian (here).

Meanwhile, the restoration of the University of Edinburgh students’ union building, Teviot Row House, earned gold in the Retrofit category, here.

And Edinburgh-based Jordan McCrae, at Collective Architecture, was named Young Architect of the Year (here).

In addition, there was a silver in the Future Building or Project category for renovation work scheduled for the Brutalist blocks of flats in Leith - Cables Wynd House and Linksview House (here, and reported by the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here).

Meanwhile, in the Low Cost Project Schemes Under 250k category (here), there was a silver for the conversion of a semi-detached bungalow near Craigleith Road (Overlap House - here).

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City Plan 2040: call for ideas issued and ‘first stage’ completed

A ‘CALL for ideas’ has been issued by the city council, to help shape its guiding planning principles and targets for the years 2030 to 2040.

An online survey has been launched by the city council about its City Plan 2040, here, with a deadline for comments being September 30.

Read more on the city council website, here, and on the website of the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

Meanwhile, City Plan 2040 has already completed its ‘first stage’, and is now with the Scottish Government for ‘permission to progress’.

Says the city council, here: “The Evidence Report is the first stage of the City Plan 2040 process.

“We have completed [it] and it was approved by Planning committee on June 3 and agreed by [the full] council on June 25.

“It will be submitted to the Scottish Government for ‘gate check’, who will decide whether we have sufficient evidence to start to prepare the proposed plan.”

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‘Public realm improvement’ contract being advertised for St Andrew Square

A CONTRACT worth an estimated £2.75m is being advertised, to carry out ‘public realm improvements’ at St Andrew Square.

The contract - uploaded on to the website, Public Contracts Scotland, here - is being offered by the city council.

Among the changes being sought is a two-way cycle lane on the east side of St David Street and along the north side of St Andrew Square and the removal of pay-and-display parking along the northern side of the square, to be replaced with blue badge spaces (for car users with a disability).

The story is picked by by Edinburgh Live website, here.

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Edinburgh named second most ‘beautiful’ city in the world

A SURVEY of Edinburgh residents - asked if they would describe their city as ‘beautiful’ - has resulted in the city being named the second most ‘beautiful’ in the world.

Says media brand, Time Out (here), some 24,000 ‘urbanites’ were surveyed, worldwide - with Cape Town, in South Africa, coming out top.

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Over-tourism concerns raised in Edinburgh Evening News feature

CONCERN has been reported that ‘over-tourism’ might threaten to jeopardise Edinburgh’s status as an UNESCO World Heritage site.

It has been raised - specifically by campaigners against what is being described as a ‘super hostel’ on Atholl Crescent - here in a feature by Callum McCormack in the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.

Read details of a ten-year Old and New Town management plan, here.

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Site news

DESPITE several appeals, BuildEdinburgh has attracted relatively few paying subscribers - thus making it difficult for the site to pursue its several, more ambitious editorial targets.

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The options facing the site are (1) keep as is, (2) longer-form content available only to paying subscribers, (3) both longer-form and the Friday news round-up available only to paying subscribers, and (4) site closure.

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Pentlands to Portobello path

A WALKING, wheeling and cycling path from the Pentland hills down to Portobello is considered by former city council leader, Donald Anderson, in his now weekly column for the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

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Four Edinburgh buildings added to ‘at risk’ register

TWO former cinemas are among four Edinburgh buildings that have been added to an ‘at risk’ register operated by an UK-wide heritage body.

The Odeon cinema on Clerk Street and The George on Bath Street, Portobello, have been added to a roster operated by SAVE Britain’s Heritage.

They are joined (as identified, here) by Leith’s Corn Exchange and a former warehouse / pub on Duke Street.

Until recently, the Scottish Government agency, Historic Environment Scotland, operated its own, comprehensive Buildings at Risk register, launched in 1990, that was organised by local authority. It is currently paused, under review (as noted, here).

The story is picked up by Urban Realm website, here, the BBC, here, and the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

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George IV Bridge scaffolding

A LETTER to The Edinburgh Reporter website has asked for a timescale on the removal of scaffolding from the former G&V Hotel on George IV Bridge.

It follows an impression given at the beginning of last year that it would be soon.

Read more, here.

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‘Eco-friendly’ flats proposal submitted for Fairmilehead

PLANNING permission is being sought, to build three ‘eco-friendly’ flats on the site of former public toilets at Fairmilehead crossroads.

A planning application - here, ref: 26/02374/FUL - concerns toilets sold by the city council ten years ago.

Says the application: “Planning permission was previously applied for to erect a three-storey single dwelling on the site (here, ref: 23/03691/FUL); however this was withdrawn.”

The architects are Kenneth Reid.

The story is picked up by Edinburgh Live website, here.

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Uncertainty hangs over fate of city bridge

A WOODEN foot and cycle bridge in Powderhall has been closed to the public, because of safety concerns.

The bridge - over the Water of Leith and connecting with St Mark’s Park - is understood to have been built in 2008/09, from a hardwood that was claimed to require no preservative or maintenance.

According to answers - from the city council - to questions submitted by the local eNewsletter, the Broughton Spurtle, it’s not known how much it will cost to repair the bridge or whether it will even go ahead.

Read more, here.

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Call reportedly made for more space to be allocated to pedestrians

A CALL has reportedly been made by well-known local architect, Malcolm Fraser, for more space to be allocated to pedestrians, in comparison to that given over to cyclists.

Fraser, is quoted - by The Scotsman’s transport correspondent, Alastair Dalton, here - saying he worries that cyclists have become “greedy”.

Fraser was a speaker at the annual general meeting (here) of the pedestrians group, Living Streets Edinburgh.

Fraser is also quoted saying the ‘zig-zag’ cycle way on Leith Walk is “the most dangerous and complex” cycle lane he knows.

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Cyclists feeling safer?

MEANWHILE, the Edinburgh Inquirer’s Sarah McArthur writes about ‘why cyclists are starting to feel safer on the streets of the capital’ - here.

She writes: “One of [the] more interesting findings is the growing cycle traffic on Picardy Place. That suggests the much-mocked Leith Walk cycle lane - once dubbed the worst in Scotland - has helped increase the popularity of cycling on that route, despite the twisting and turning path it takes along the pavement.”

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Concern raised about food delivery eBikes on cycle paths

ALSO, regular columnist on The Scotsman newspaper, Stephen Jardine, is concerned about eBikes being ridden by food delivery riders on the city’s walking and cycle paths.

In his Saturday column (here), the broadcaster - who is also president of the local heritage body, The Cockburn Association - writes why it might be time to restrict their access.

He is concerned about safety, because of the speed the bikes are often ridden at.

He writes: “Restrict­ing their access to shared spaces like the urban cycle path net­work would be a move in the right dir­ec­tion.”

The previous day, The Edinburgh Reporter website ran a story, headlined: ‘Council leaders challenged over dangerous eBike use’.

Here.

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Niddrie mural restored

A ‘COMMUNITY mural’ has been restored in Niddrie.

Reports the website, Deadline News (here), the work was carried out by volunteers over an 18-month period.

Read more, here (on the website of the Edinburgh Health & Social Care Partnership).

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The fightback against Dutch elm disease

EDINBURGH’S fightback against the devastating consequences of Dutch elm disease is examined by the website, Edinburgh Inquirer.

The city council’s Trees and Woodlands officer, Ian Morrison, is quoted estimating that around 30,000 elms have been lost in the capital since it was first recorded in 1976.

Read more, here.

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Newhaven litter pick

A LITTER pick is taking place on Tuesday evening, in Newhaven.

The event - at the Fishmarket - is being organised by regular litter pickers, the Edinburgh Trash Club.

More details, here.

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Relocation scheduled for Reiach and Hall Architects

ONE of Edinburgh’s best-known architecture firms has purchased a former Royal Mail sorting office, on Strathearn Road, to become its new offices.

Reiach and Hall Architects currently operates out of offices on Darnaway Street.

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Reparation scheme clocks up just under 50,000 hours of ‘urban improvement’

JUST under 50,000 hours of unpaid work was carried out last year in Edinburgh by people found guilty of a criminal offence and sentenced to a ‘community payback’ order.

Among the tasks carried out - as noted here, by the city council - was clearing-up work at a pavilion in Gyle Park, on Ferry Road and at Leith Theatre.

Views are being sought in an online consultation about the orders.

Here.

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Review of outdoor seating charges being called for by petition

A PETITION has been launched, urging the city council to review how much it charges hospitality businesses for setting out outdoor seating and tables.

The appeal also asks for outdoor, advertising ‘A-boards’ to be permitted, under licence (they are currently banned).

The petition has been set up by the Leith-based Shore Business Collective. It is headlined: ‘Make Edinburgh tables and chairs charges fair and introduce licensed A boards for local businesses’.

It closes in September, here.

Details of how to petition the city council can be found, here.

The story is picked up by The Herald newspaper, here.

Six possible BuildEdinburgh petitions, perhaps?

• To set up an information, skills and financing office to support resident-designed housing;

• Launch an ‘open design competition’, to revamp Princes Street, Rose Street and George Street;

• Launch a ‘restoration fund’, to contribute towards the maintenance and gradual improvement of Princes Street, Rose Street and George Street;

• Make ‘open design competitions’ mandatory for housing developments (including student accommodation) in excess of 50 units and other buildings in excess of 10,000 sq ft;

• Launch an explicit and public-facing campaign towards making every bus stop in the city sheltered (check these out, here) and served by an electronic arrivals boards; and

• Redesign the planning applications portal, so that it is more interactive and easier to interrogate.

Image details: Overlooking the Water of Leith, at Bonnington; copyright Mike Wilson

SINCE the launch of BuildEdinburgh around about this time last year, Granton has appeared in the site’s news round-ups several times.

Including the following:

W/e May 9 2025 - here: Chestnut Street housing shortlisted in housing awards competition;

W/e May 9 2025 - here: The Pitt warehouse opens to more than 35 enterprising businesses, creatives, service providers and community partners;

August 13-15 2025 - here: Landscaping plans for Granton rail station;

August 13-15 2025 - here: Granton Harbour planning request;

W/e November 14 2025 - here: £42m of Scottish Government funding announced for Granton housing development;

W/e November 14 2025 - here: Granton Waterfront housebuilding contract to be considered by city council committee;

W/e January 9 2026 - here: Bus journey times, West Granton to the Royal Infirmary;

W/e January 9 2026 - here: Granton flats plan approved;

W/e January 9 2026 - here: Two more consultation events, this time for Western Harbour plans;

W/e March 27 2026 - here: Community hub delivered to Granton ‘village’ for people experiencing homelessness;

W/e March 27 2026 - here: Land for sale, Granton harbour; and

W/e March 27 2026 - here: Government steps in to complete funding pot for old Granton lighthouse.

Plus, of course, a few times in the context of a proposed north-south new tram line between Granton and Little France.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

WALK around Edinburgh long enough and you keep running into the same name.

The university library, the Canongate housing, the Scottish Widows building on Dalkeith Road, a church in Clermiston: Sir Basil Spence is all over the city, and most people walk past his buildings without a second glance.

Basil Spence and Partners (later Spence, Glover and Ferguson) occupied offices at 40 Moray Place from 1946 to 1992, with the Spence family residing on the first floor.

Spence shared a long, storied association with Edinburgh, having been educated at George Watson’s and the Edinburgh College of Art, where he was reportedly a star student renowned for his brilliance as a draughtsman.

Beyond Moray Place, he also lived on Jordan Lane in Morningside, in an eccentric property where he left his own distinct imprint.

This included a rather unattractive concrete fireplace, standing in stark contrast to a room otherwise defined by an elegant painted ceiling by the renowned artist, Samuel Bough.

A later owner considered taking a sledgehammer to the fireplace, only pausing when informed that, as a piece of Spence’s work, it was likely listed. It is a fitting anecdote for an architect whose output has frequently courted controversy.

His architectural imprint on Edinburgh is significant and varied, spanning from pre-war Art Deco to bold post-war Brutalism and Modernism.

Rather than imposing a single, rigid style, Spence shifted between movements with notable adaptability, always seeking to match form, light and material to the function of each space.

His earliest Edinburgh commission, the Causewayside Garage of 1933, was built in a striking Art Deco style using glass, steel and concrete, and has since been converted into residential apartments.

By the post-war era, his focus turned to rebuilding and expanding the city’s institutions.

His master planning and design work for the University of Edinburgh produced some of Scotland’s finest modernist buildings, most notably the Grade A-listed Main Library in George Square, celebrated for its innovative concrete and glass exterior, deliberately structured to mimic columns of bookshelves.

At its opening, it was the largest university library in the UK.

His other key university work includes the James Clerk Maxwell Building at the King’s Buildings science campus.

Beyond the university, significant projects include the Canongate Housing Development on the Royal Mile, the Harry Younger Hall, and St Andrew’s Church in Clermiston, his only Church of Scotland design, featuring a minimalist, Scandinavian-inspired white gabled form paired with a detached concrete bell tower.

What sets Spence’s Edinburgh portfolio apart is how his boldest modernist concepts were tailored to respect the city’s historic fabric.

This is well illustrated in the Canongate development, where he introduced modern social housing into the Old Town by blending concrete arches with traditional Scottish vernacular rubble stone.

When given the freedom of open suburban or corporate sites, he leaned into grand-scale modular futurism.

The former Scottish Widows headquarters on Dalkeith Road, with its interlocking hexagonal forms and dark glass facades, is a celebrated icon of post-war Scottish commercial architecture and has been rightly listed.

The way the building echoes the Salisbury Crags behind it is very clear on sunny days, drawing attention towards it and creating a desire to investigate.

Spence was often seen as a moderate advocate of modern architecture, yet he was also at the heart of the backlash against it.

Projects like the Hyde Park Barracks were highly controversial, and his involvement in social housing, particularly the Hutchesontown C development in the Gorbals, Glasgow, was troubled.

The deeper influences behind Spence’s work were the subject of a talk four years ago by John Witcombe, Dean of Coventry Cathedral - which Spence redesigned, following the Second World War - given as part of the Moray Feu Bicentenary.

Close to home, Edinburgh’s Mortonhall Crematorium offers a revealing companion piece.

This serene, Grade A-listed concrete structure shares the same vocabulary as Coventry: the multi-angled vertical fins, the careful manipulation of light, the sense that a building can hold both weight and stillness at once.

Witcombe spoke movingly of how the Cathedral reflects ideas of redemption and hope.

The original 15th-century cathedral in Coventry was destroyed on 14 November 1940, in a raid by the Luftwaffe that almost obliterated the city, an event that gave rise to the term, ‘Coventration’.

After a design by Giles Gilbert Scott was rejected, a subsequent competition gave Spence, who had long harboured the ambition of building a cathedral, his great opportunity.

The building’s legacy highlights the tension between artistic vision and practical reality.

Witcombe admitted that the sheer length of the nave makes it less than ideal for delivering sermons, and the original design suffered from a shortage of toilets.

As Spence himself acknowledged of the inevitable overspend, space is expensive.

The building is, in many ways, a complete work of art, underlined by the integration of major works including Graham Sutherland’s tapestry and Jacob Epstein’s exterior sculpture.

Witcombe’s great conviction is in the power of art to bridge divides and promote reconciliation, a mission central to the Cathedral itself.

Born from conflict, the structure offers a living embodiment of hope and rebirth. The Cathedral now operates a ‘reconciliation ministry’, a legacy that continues this work.

The Cathedral’s reputation, and Spence’s more generally, has been rising in recent years.

Edinburgh architect, Malcolm Fraser, has argued that the best of Spence’s work is of a clarity, simplicity and power that towers over the wilful egotism of today’s arguably more gratuitous post-modern shape making.

The standing of 20th-century modernist and brutalist buildings is undergoing a significant rehabilitation, though many are being demolished just as their qualities are being reconsidered.

The restoration of the University of Edinburgh Library illustrates what sustained investment can achieve, of the kind previously reserved for older eras.

It is easy to dismiss structures like Edinburgh’s Argyle House, on Lady Lawson Street, often despised because of what was demolished to make way for it.

Yet the trajectory of the Barbican Centre, in London, now celebrating its 40th anniversary with a considerably improved reputation, shows that a shift in perception is possible.

We should bring the same imagination and commitment to finding new uses for 20th-century buildings that we readily extend to older ones.

Witcombe’s presentation was a reminder that catastrophe can inspire renewal. It urged those present to revisit Coventry Cathedral and, no less importantly, to look again at the modernist structures around us that we too quickly write off.

Charlie Ellis is an Edinburgh-based researcher, writer and EFL teacher, who covers culture, education and politics.

Main image: Main library, University of Edinburgh; all images: copyright Mike Wilson

FOR around 13 years, Granton was pretty much my whole world.

Now, it’s the Mediterranean, which I’ll explain in a moment.

Operating out of the old lighthouse, on West Shore Road, myself and a handful of others had the temerity to call ourselves a Community Development Trust.

We had a constitution, big ambitions and what we felt was vision. We had even been awarded at least three grants - from Development Trusts Association Scotland, The National Lottery and the then ‘office of the design leader’ at The City of Edinburgh Council.

Between circa 2009 and 2017, 4CDT dreamed up all sorts of ideas for the area. My commitment to it was absolute, even though I was living in Leith at the time.

My early career had been involved working for the founding members of the development corporation that helped shape London Docklands, and that experience provided me with an unwavering belief in the need for designing a place holistically, down to the last inch and led by people living locally.

As I understand it, there is still some form a masterplan for Granton. There certainly have been others in the past and it once even had an over-arching body - called the Waterfront Edinburgh Ltd - which is now long consigned to the pages of history.

And into that mix - back in the day - we trotted along with what we were convinced was a no-brainer of an idea.

It was for an outdoor swimming pool, bordered by shipping container artist studios, on the site of a former walled garden that we imagined would, in time, be able to host an international garden festival.

Rather pretentiously, perhaps, we titled the whole project, Granton-sur-Mer.

Sadly, I soon began to lose count of the number of meetings we had with so-called decision-makers, and - indeed - the number of times we were promised a physical role that, in the end, just evaporated into thin air.

Quite how we even got so close still amazes me, that tiny, old us could ever be taken seriously. We were tiny - but with a pretty decent range of skills, including architectural ones - and that meant, ultimately, that we could be easily batted away.

Anyone who knows me knows I fight back when I feel I have been treated badly.

I know I will have alienated quite a few folk, some of whom could have been holding the sort of purse strings we needed to get our ‘lido’ off the ground.

New lidos - or refurbished old ones - are today appearing all over place.

Nowadays, the site is a community garden (here). Even though the site had been a walled garden, it’s not that the city doesn’t have space elsewhere for such schemes.

Even now, I still believe that the main thrust of our lido project could be a driving force for innovative new development and economic pulling power.

In the end, I just couldn’t stomach it any more.

I couldn’t handle what I thought was both arrogance and complacency.

So I upped sticks and set up an art gallery in the south of France.

From my wee art gallery, I made a different life for myself; including falling in love.

I sail. I ski. I like to study and I dabble in a little small-scale architecture.

I still often think about the lido that was never to be; hoping that, one day, the idea will rise from the ashes.

Even last year, I was moved to draft a letter of complaint, but then decided against dispatching it.

I can still get annoyed.

But, by no longer living in Edinburgh, I am now much more relaxed.

Ross McEwan is a former local campaigner and ‘urban designer’. He has spent the last six years renovating his home in the south of France, which is now up for sale (here).

Image details: Walled garden, Granton; copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• Leith Docks housing development approved;

• Student block provisionally approved, on appeal;

• ‘Bold, ambitious’ solutions being called for growing city;

• ‘Improvement plan’ expected to address ‘fragmented’ approach to city council’s ownership of buildings and land;

• Insight into co-operative organisation;

• £5m upgrade for West Pilton park;

• Trio of Edinburgh entries pick up prizes at Homes awards;

• Architectural practice ‘transitions’ to employee ownership;

• Edinburgh professor appointed chair of ‘circular economy’ overseeing board;

• ‘Active travel’ project delays analysed;

• Award-winning garden finally opens in Victoria Park;

• Princes Street successor shops;

• Padel courts permission being sought;

• The flumes at the ‘Commie’;

• Experience-sharing invite issued to heritage projects;

• Marionville fire station - more;

• Dunard Centre: piling work completed; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Leith Docks housing development approved

PLANNING-in-principle permission has been approved for a 240-250 unit housing development at Leith Docks.

The development - here, ref: 24/01341/PPP and 24/01343/LBC - is part of a wider ‘Harbour 31’ scheme. The site is north-west of Bath Road.

Says the owner, Forth Ports Ltd, here: “The apartments will be formed over a four-plot development with heights of up to six storeys, with a focus on communal green spaces.

“As well as benefiting from the tram stop at The Port of Leith, the proposed development will include a new transport corridor to encourage sustainable modes of transport, including a bus route, cycle lane and walking route linking Bath Road to Ocean Way.”

The permission was approved by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee, on Wednesday: here, agenda item 6.1.

The story is picked up The Edinburgh Reporter and Edinburgh Live websites, here and here.

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Student block provisionally approved, on appeal

A PLANNING application for a 125-bed student accommodation block on a site on Gillespie Crescent has been provisionally approved, on appeal.

A Scottish Government ‘reporter’ has recommended approval of an appeal (here, ref: PPA-230-2711), following rejection last year by the city council.

Says the Planning and Environment Appeals Division (DPEA) of the Scottish Government: “The reporter is minded to grant permission, subject to a legal agreement being reached. The final decision has therefore been deferred for the period detailed in the Notice of Intention to allow the conclusion of that agreement.”

The scheme (here, ref: 25/02255/FUL) refused by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee in November was its second iteration.

A previous iteration had been refused by both the city council - two years ago - and the Scottish Government, on appeal.

The site - which will involve demolition of an existing complex - used to be owned by the visual impairment charity, Sight Scotland.

The story is picked up Deadline News website, here, and The Herald newspaper, here.

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‘Bold, ambitious’ solutions being called for growing city

‘BOLD and ambitious’ solutions to a rapidly-growing Edinburgh are being called for, by the city council’s transport convener.

Writes Cllr Stephen Jenkinson, in Sunday’s edition of Scotland on Sunday newspaper: “Addressing these challenges [transport, climate change, housing, etc] means being bold and ambitious in our solutions.

“Mass transit, with trams at the heart, is one of the key drivers in making our city work better for everyone. Doing nothing, as some are suggesting, is simply not an option.”

In other words, he supports both the northern leg (which seems to be under some political threat) as well as the southern leg of a proposed new tram route connecting Granton with Little France.

Read more, here.

All the estimates point to quite the increase in the population of Edinburgh, to around 585,838 by 2047 (as noted, here).

And that’s before anticipated similar growth in East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian are factored into what could become a south-east Scotland metropolis.

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‘Improvement plan’ expected to address ‘fragmented’ approach to city council’s ownership of buildings and land

AN ‘improvement plan’ is expected to be investigated by a city council committee, following a report describing the council’s approach to ‘strategic asset management’ - i.e. the many buildings and land holdings it owns - as “fragmented”.

Yesterday, a meeting of the full council - here, agenda item 7.6 - was asked to note a report by Audit Scotland, here, that concluded: “The council’s approach to strategic asset management is fragmented, which makes it harder for the council to make well-informed decisions about priorities. The council does not have an overarching corporate asset management strategy with its approach to asset management spread across several asset management strategies.”

The request to note was by the council’s Governance, Risk and Best Value committee, which is now expected to come up with a way forward on how best to address the issue.

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Insight into co-operative organisation

AN event being hosted by the Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative, in Bruntsfield, is aiming to help showcase the benefits of running an organisation as a co-operative entity.

Begins the event blurb - here: “Join members of Scottish co-operatives of all kinds for talks, workshops, communal meals… and more!”

It’s a full-day event, kicking off at 10am tomorrow.

One of the participants is Bath Street Housing Co-op.

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£5m upgrade for West Pilton park

A PARK in West Pilton is to undergo a £5m restoration.

Says one of the two partners in the project - Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspace Trust (the other partner being the city council): “The funding will deliver improvements across the park, including better access, modern play and skate facilities, new planting and enhanced habitats for wildlife.

“Together, these upgrades will help make West Pilton Park an attractive and welcoming destination for people of all ages to enjoy and use regularly.”

Construction work, which is scheduled to have already begun, is expected to be completed by November next year.

The story is picked up by The Herald newspaper, here.

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Trio of Edinburgh entries pick up prizes at Homes awards

A TRIO of Edinburgh entries have been named winners at an annual awards competition, celebrating Scotland’s housing sector.

Picking up prizes at the Scottish Home Awards (here) were Umega Lettings & Estate Agents (Residential letting team); Village View, AMA Homes (Apartment development) and New Craig at Craighouse, Qmile Group (Renovation).

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Architectural practice ‘transitions’ to employee ownership

AN Edinburgh architectural practice has ‘transitioned’ to employee ownership, after its owners decided to transfer their shares to an Employee Ownership Trust.

The announcement was made - here - by Smith Scott Mullan.

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Edinburgh professor appointed chair of ‘circular economy’ overseeing board

A PROFESSOR at the Edinburgh Futures Institute has been named the chair of a board of experts tasked with overseeing efforts to minimise waste in the construction industry and maximise the re-use of materials.

A ‘mission board’ - including representation from the construction industry - has been set up by not-for-profit environment organisation, Zero Waste Scotland (which is primarily funded by the Scottish Government).

At the beginning of the month, Zero Waste Scotland launched a ‘roadmap’ to promote a ‘circular economy’ in the construction industry - here.

And its over-seeing ‘mission board’ is to be chaired by Prof. Sean Smith, who is director of the Centre for Future Infrastructure at the University of Edinburgh.

As announced here.

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‘Active travel’ project delays analysed

AN analysis of a city council document - detailing pauses to an ‘active travel’ (walking, wheeling, cycling) programme (here) - has found 21 construction projects having their starts delayed and 22 current projects having their end points delayed.

With the longest delay estimated at one year, three months and the average delay one-and-a-half months.

The analysis has been carried out by Harry Williams, who runs City-Scope.co.uk, which tracks Edinburgh planning applications.

Award-winning garden finally opens in Victoria Park

A MULTI award-winning ‘sensory’ garden has finally been opened in Victoria Park.

Drakkars Drift has been designed by Leith resident, Luke Coleman.

Says the city council, here: “Following [his award-winning at RHS Wentworth Woodhouse, in South Yorkshire, last year], an ambitious community fundraising campaign was launched to secure the garden’s future in Edinburgh.

“The original design has since been adapted and expanded to transform a former bowling green in Victoria Park into a vibrant, accessible community space.

“The garden was shaped by feedback from residents, who expressed a desire for more sensory planting in the park. Particular attention has been given to texture, movement, colour, scent and sound, creating an engaging and inclusive experience for all visitors.”

The story is picked up by the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

Princes Street successor shops

TWO shop premises on Princes Street that suddenly had their doors shut just a few days ago have been taken over by two new names above the door.

Where previously it was House of Treasure and The Edinburgh Gift Vault, it is now Toyland and Scottish Gifts.

Meanwhile, 7DaySmart, next door, also has a new name above its entrance: Essentials.

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Padel courts permission being sought

PLANNING permission is being sought for the erection of two, covered padel courts in Stockbridge.

The application - here, ref: 26/02499/FUL - is for a site on Portgower Place, “within the wider Edinburgh Academicals [rugby club] / Raeburn Place sports grounds”.

Read more, here, on the website, City-Scope.

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The flumes at the ‘Commie’

THE former flumes at the Royal Commonwealth Pool? Read more about them, on the website of local historian, Andy Arthur, here.

Experience-sharing invite issued to heritage projects

A CALL has been issued for heritage projects to share their experiences.

It comes from the Scottish Civic Trust, as part of a ‘Community Heritage Conversation’ it is hosting in November.

Read more, here.

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Marionville fire station - more

THE headline to an article on the website, Edinburgh Inquirer, reads: ‘The battle to save Marionville Fire Station is far from over’.

Read more, here.

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Dunard Centre: piling work completed

PILING (foundation) work has been completed in the build of a new 1,000-seat concert venue - between St Andrew Square and the St James Quarter.

Says the Dunard Centre, here: “In another significant milestone, one of the two tower cranes required for the project has now been installed, creating a striking visual marker of the on-site progress. Works are progressing on time and to budget, with practical completion of the world-class venue expected in 2029.”

The story is picked up by The Herald newspaper, here.

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Image details: Granton harbour; all images copyright Mike Wilson

IT’S at times like this when the depth of one’s ignorance becomes all too obvious.

Let me set the scene…

Up near Fairmilehead crossroads, there’s a modern, fairly large and standalone office block, that’s owned by Scottish Water.

For various reasons - not least because of home working by many of its staff - it has been deemed surplus to requirements.

A Proposal of Application Notice (PAN) has been successfully submitted - here (ref: 26/00798/PAN) - with two in-person, public consultation events having already been hosted.

The proposal reads: “Demolition of all existing buildings and the proposed erection of a residential-led (Class 9/Sui-Generis) mixed-used development and other associated works and infrastructure - including car parking, servicing, access arrangements and landscaping.”

The next steps are a planning-in-principle application, and - assuming that is granted - for the site to be put up for sale.

It is just one of several residential development opportunities dotted around the city.

But if any community group was to entertain the idea of developing any of them - along designs agreed in advance by prospective residents - the chances of it coming off are always going to be remote.

Assuming it was even possible to gather a list of local people potentially interested in moving into housing on the Scottish Water site (a gargantuan task in its own right), there are so many skillsets required to translate community aspirations into reality, it can prove just too daunting.

It’s a lucky community group, indeed, that has, among its ranks, any legal, architectural, planning, financial, chartered surveying, residential development, quantity surveying or construction expertise.

Not to mention an intimate knowledge - should the opportunity exist (such as with the Scottish Water building) - of how to potentially take advantage of community empowerment legislation (stretching back to 2015), which could provide a community right-to-buy opportunity, including via a Community Asset Transfer.

The sad reality of trying to knit a patchwork of skillsets together - by contacting individual skills and information providers - can often end up in not even receiving the courtesy of a reply.

The city council is not averse to setting up pilot projects - it did so, relatively recently, in October, with a ‘right-to-grow’ project agreed by the city council’s Culture and Communities committee (here, agenda item 7.1).

The job description for any possible council member of staff - responsible for supporting community-led housing - might well be to look for a generalist (perhaps with an intimate knowledge of community empowerment legislation), who is able to make good links with all the various other necessary specialists.

Alternatively, an organisation might be somehow funded, so that it is able to attract volunteer expertise.

Planning Aid Scotland seems to have somehow ‘cracked that nut’, and it could provide a template as to how to establish a similar, sustainable organisational structure.

Another possible template is Zero Waste Scotland, which is a not-for-profit environmental organisation and a company limited by guarantee that is primarily funded by the Scottish Government.

The truth is community-led housing sounds great in theory. In practice, the challenges can be legion.

This website has published several articles extolling the virtues of resident-designed housing (here).

Among the possible elements of a potential tenemental development: car and bike sharing, recycling and refuse, a residents’ handbook (as in here, on BuildEdinburgh), communal gardening, power tools sharing, gym facilities, ‘later living’ requirements, communal laundry facilities, litter picking, storage space, social and meeting space, repair and maintenance, wildlife havens, acoustic and thermal insulation, elevator access, outdoor games courts, acoustic and thermal insulation, super-secure door entries, outdoor seating and lighting, secure car and bike parking, guest bedrooms, children’s play park, bulk buying of provisions, adjacent properties for extended families (not least for those with caring responsibilities), trees, common insurance, dedicated indoor space for young people, book clubs, crafting space, spring flowers, sanctuary courtyard, solar panels, balconies, ground floor retail, co-working space, treatment rooms and offices, etc, etc.

They represent little more than serving suggestions, with some elements offering the distinct possibility of saving people money.

Because, after all, it would be for the community to decide.

Mike Wilson is editor of BuildEdinburgh

Image details: the Scottish Water offices at Fairmilehead; copyright Mike Wilson

THE No.13 is one of Edinburgh’s stranger bus routes.

Small, subsidised and run by Midland Bluebird rather than Lothian, it threads its way through corners of the city that most services simply bypass.

A route plan doesn’t do it justice either: it snakes through quieter streets of the New Town - Drumsheugh Gardens and Drummond Place among them - that rarely see a bus at all.

Near the eastern end of the route is Lochend, not a locale that tourists often find their way to.

The park and its loch are well worth the trip, and the area around Meadowbank is changing fast.

Along the way, the little bus passes through brownfield sites that, having been neglected for decades, are now busy with building activity, giving a good picture of a city in the middle of reinventing itself.

While its eastern reaches offer a glimpse into post-industrial repurposing, the western arm is a journey into the city at its greenest and most exclusive, an exercise in ‘rus in urb’, where privilege is measured in acres of quiet, leafy isolation.

Climbing aboard on Hanover Street, we quickly escape the bustle of Princes Street, the small Bluebird 13 weaving almost apologetically between its much larger Lothian cousins.

It clambers down Queensferry Street, narrowly avoiding the visitors heading to Dean Village. Freed from traffic, it then scuttles down Drumsheugh Gardens. A few stops later, after passing the Gallery of Modern Art (it cuts between Modern One and Two), the journey takes a distinct turn.

The bus begins its slow saunter up Ravelston Dykes Road, along the fringes of Murrayfield. It’s here you appreciate the strange sense of access provided by public transport.

For a moment, you are a passenger cutting directly between a major private school (Mary Erskine’s) and two golf courses (Murrayfield and the Ravelston nine-holer), glimpsing through the trees and over the fences.

We pass the dense Ravelston Woods, a genuinely wild-feeling spot that shows how, in just a few stops, the 13 can take you from the tourist trickle towards Dean Village into a dark, sylvan maze.

This part of Edinburgh is resolutely, sometimes startlingly, residential.

Peaceful, yes, but often verging on lifeless: a long, slow trundle through streets where even a smidgen of commercial enterprise comes as a surprise.

After passing along the base of Corstorphine Hill on Craigcrook Road, the bus drifts into a maze of bungalowed back roads. When it finally disgorges onto the waves of traffic on Queensferry Road, the countryside trundle is over.

The 13’s terminus is perhaps the most pointed destination of the entire journey: Craigleith Retail Park.

Around the back of the enormous Sainsbury’s, you can see bare sandstone, the scar of the massive quarry from which much of the New Town was built, including the Greek Revival Old Royal High School.

Now, history is overlaid with a starkly different vision. Craigleith is utilitarian, basic, and utterly divorced from its surroundings. It is a monument to the car-centric, Americanised UK retail experience, a functional bunker within easy reach of affluent, virtually shop-less residential areas.

The retail park raises a question facing modern Edinburgh: what kind of city do we want?

The European model of good public transport and density, or this car-driven, sprawl-friendly design? The latter feels like a failed 1960s vision we’ve somehow kept faith with, a physical embodiment of the UK’s awkward position between two continents.

Yet even Craigleith has a silver lining. It’s one great plus is its position as a nodal point on the old railway path network. From here, you have easy active travel access to Granton, Leith and, through the Roseburn Path, south to Fountainbridge (via the new link at Russell Road / Dalry) and Haymarket.

The 13 bus itself is a key to this network, giving access to the Water of Leith walkway and other green corridors, including at its western tip the Restalrig Railway Path.

This tension is precisely what fuels the stooshie surrounding proposals to run a new tram leg down that very Roseburn Path, pitting the residential preference for untouched green space against the need for high-capacity, climate-conscious public transport. But that is a topic for another time.

The ‘Broughton Spurtle’ newsletter reports that there are once again concerns about the survival of the No. 13, with the question of renewing the city council subsidy due to be discussed in July. It would be a shame to lose it.

The 13 doesn’t just offer a scenic route. It actively connects travellers with otherwise hard-to-access corners of the city. Moving from the Georgian streets of the New Town to the repurposed industrial sites near McDonald Road, and landing squarely in the functionalism of Craigleith, the bus traces Edinburgh’s evolving identity: old brownfield sites finding new life, the suburban sprawl of the retail park, greener urbanism planned for areas like Seafield.

For years, Edinburgh has struggled to manage congestion while preserving its historic core.

Some argue that limiting car access is ruining the city centre; others that the car-driven model is the very thing hollowing it out. Past decisions, from Tollcross to Potterrow, still shape daily frustration.

The real wealth of Edinburgh isn’t only in its stone buildings or its golf courses, but in the connectivity offered by its public spaces, paths and public transport.

The future of the city rests not in catering to the car, but in investing in the routes, both bus and path, that knit the divided city together.

The No.13 is a good place to start.

Charlie Ellis is an Edinburgh-based researcher, writer and EFL teacher, who covers culture, education and politics.

Image detail: copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• Western Harbour - 212 homes application;

• Braids estate traffic diversion barriers to be removed;

• Powderhall ‘active travel’ path campaign boosted by MSP’s support;

• Average house price, Scotland;

• Reprieve expected for Marionville fire station;

• New retail space being applied for at Fort Kinnaird;

• Budget request submitted to employ additional ‘problem landlord’ officers;

• Scottish Government to be asked to define a ‘green’ data centre;

• Apartments plan lodged for Leith-based Victorian engine shed;

• Fringe Society HQ unveiled;

• Office-to-’apart-hotel’ conversion plan submitted;

• Willowbrae Road gap site the subject of hotel planning application;

• ‘Wembley Way’ plan unveiled for Royal Highland Centre;

• Obituary published of ‘saviour’ of Edinburgh’s built heritage;

• Water of Leith: challenges and celebrations;

• After Holyrood, has Scottish architecture lost its verve?

• Perks for paying subscribers; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Western Harbour - 212 homes application

A PLANNING application has been submitted to build 212 homes at Western Harbour.

The application follows a Proposal of Application Notice - here, ref: 25/06573/PAN - submitted in December..

Says a media release on behalf of the applicant -house builders, Cullross: “Extensive engagement with the local community has taken place over recent months, including two well-attended public consultation events in January and February at the Heart of Newhaven, where 116 people participated across both sessions.

“Meetings have also been held with key stakeholders, including Leith Harbour and Newhaven Community Council and Western Harbour Owners’ Association.”

Read more, on western-harbour.com. Read more, here, on the website of the PR company that issued the media release.

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Braids estate traffic diversion barriers to be removed

A NARROW 6-5 vote has agreed to remove traffic diversion barriers on the Braids estate, while accepting that a similar ‘modal filter’ on Canaan Lane should remain.

The barriers include where Braid Road meets Hermitage Drive.

In what must rank as one of the longest and most diverse debates about a specific topic at the city council’s Transport and Environment committee yesterday (here, agenda item 7.3), it essentially came down to the risk of a legal challenge (against a decision to keep the ‘filters’) versus providing safe spaces, particularly for young people.

The long-lasting deliberations - remarked upon during the debate, since other city areas having their own issues - was preceded by several deputations and included a presentation from Cllr Ben Parker (in favour of keeping the filters, supporting deputations from local school groups).

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Powderhall ‘active travel’ path campaign boosted by MSP’s support

A CAMPAIGN to turn a former rail line in north Edinburgh into an ‘active travel’ (walking, cycling and wheeling) route has reportedly received the backing of a local MSP.

Writes Sarah Challen Flynn, in Sunday’s edition of The National newspaper, here: “Since trains stopped running on the Powderhall railway line between St Mark’s Park and Meadowbank - in north Edinburgh, ten years ago - the line has remained vacant.”

And she quotes local MSP, Ben Macpherson, saying a path requires to be opened to the general public “sooner rather than later”.

Among other things, land ownership - involving rail infrastructure organisation, Network Rail - requires resolving.

The campaign is quoted, as saying: “We want to get people thinking about how [the path] could be used (ie not just a cycle path) and how it might progress.”

Suggestions include benches, children’s play space, murals, gardening sites and ecological conservation.

Read more about the campaign, here.

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A canopy being installed on Wednesday at the King’s Theatre…

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Average house price, Scotland

THE average price of a house in Scotland - during April - was £192,000 - according to the National Records of Scotland.

Says NRS, here, £192,000 represents at 2.8 per cent increase on the same time last year, and a 2.7 per cent increase on the average price in March.

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Reprieve expected for Marionville fire station

AN Edinburgh fire station is expected to saved from closure, according to a recommendation to be presented to the board of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

The station - in Marionville - had been subject to a high-profile campaign to save it from closure.

And the campaign appears to have paid off - here. At least for now.

The SFRS board is meeting on Monday.

The story is picked up by The Edinburgh Reporter website, here.

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New retail space being applied for at Fort Kinnaird

A PLANNING application has been submitted to add over 40,000 sq ft of new space at Fort Kinnaird retail park.

Say the owners, British Land: “Plans include a new c.19,750 sq ft food store on the ground floor, alongside a c.22,785 sq ft enhanced leisure offering on the first floor, supporting the continued growth of the destination’s leisure quarter and enhancing the overall visitor experience. Once complete, the new destinations would bring more than 60 new jobs to the local area.

“Located alongside Fort Kinnaird’s established leisure and food offering, including ODEON cinema, Wagamama and Nando’s, the plans have been devised with sustainability in mind. When designing the building services, both tenants will include air-source heat pumps and photovoltaic systems.”

The planning application (here, ref: 26/02450/FUL) says: “The application site is a brownfield gap site which has been vacant for over 18 years, following the demolition of portions of the original 1989 Craig Park retail and leisure development. The original development incorporated cinema and retail space created in 1990.”

The architects are Cooper Cromar.

The story is picked up by several media outlets, including Edinburgh Live website, here, and The Herald and Scotsman newspapers, here and here.

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Budget request submitted to employ additional ‘problem landlord’ officers

SIX additional ‘enforcement officers’ could be taken on, to police ‘problem’ landlords in Edinburgh’s private rented sector.

Particularly those landlords who don’t ‘adequately’ maintain their properties.

A budget of £350,000 is being sought, to employ the six new officers, to be considered by a meeting on Tuesday of the council’s Finance and Resources committee (here, agenda item 8.7).

Read the papers to be considered by the committee members, here.

They say: “The council has a duty to regulate the private rented sector, ensuring that all properties meet the required standards and that licence holders and landlords are fit and proper. Failure to meet the duty to regulate the sector may result in poor healthand wellbeing outcomes for tenants, and result in reputational damage to the council.”

The story is picked up by ‘local democracy reporter’, Joe Sullivan (his post paid for by the BBC), here.

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Scottish Government to be asked to define a ‘green’ data centre

THE Scottish Government is to be asked to define what is meant by a ‘green’ data centre after city council officials advised that councillors did not necessarily have the powers to agree a definition themselves.

Or apply a moratorium.

Wednesday’s Planning committee (here, agenda item 7.1) considered a paper (here) from officials.

But the committee decided to back a ‘tougher’ set of demands - proposed by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens: that the Scottish Government also declares a moratorium on new data centres until an official definition is provided.

In February, members of the council’s Development Management sub-committee rejected a planning-in-principle application (here, 25/04239/PPP) for such a centre, on Redheughs Avenue, in South Gyle - as reported, here, on BuildEdinburgh.

It was felt that a Scottish Government definition will make it easier for the council to adjudicate on centre applications to it.

The story is picked up by The Herald and Edinburgh Evening News newspapers, here and here.

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Apartments plan lodged for Leith-based Victorian engine shed

WHAT is being described by the applicant as a “badly-neglected Victorian engine shed” in Leith is the subject of a planning application, to turn it into four serviced apartments.

The application - here, ref: 26/02166/FULSTL - concerns a property on Ocean Drive.

The architects are Johnston-Harris Architects.

The story is picked up by the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

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Fringe Society HQ unveiled

A NEW, permanent home for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been unveiled.

It follows refurbishment of a former schoolhouse on Infirmary Street.

Says the Fringe Society, here: “New features include air source heat pumps, an accessible Changing Places toilet and a new lift, all while preserving the history and aesthetic of both the building and the surrounding area.”

The story is picked up by broadcasters, STV, here.

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Office-to-’apart-hotel’ conversion plan submitted

A CHANGE-of-use planning application has been submitted to convert an office block at the Pleasance into an ‘apart-hotel’, comprising 23 suites.

The application - here, ref: 26/02219/FUL - is for 181 Pleasance, opposite Carnegie Court. It has been submitted by Format Design Architectural Services.

The story is picked up by the website, Edinburgh Live, here.

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Willowbrae Road gap site the subject of hotel planning application

A GAP site on Willowbrae Road is now the subject of a 82-room hotel planning application.

The application - here, ref: 26/02294/FUL - involves a site once occupied by a pub.

Writes Kevin Quinn, of the Edinburgh Evening News, here: “The site at the junction with Northfield Drive was most recently occupied by the Radical Road pub, previously the Right Wing owned by Hibs legend, Gordon Smith, but has been an empty gap site for around eight years now.”

The architects are Unum Partnership.

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‘Wembley Way’ plan unveiled for Royal Highland Centre

THE Royal Highland Centre, at Ingliston, has unveiled a five-year plan that imagines the venue as a “year-round destination for events, conferences, exhibitions and live entertainment”.

Adds a media release on behalf of the centre, which is owned by the Royal Highland & Agricultural Society of Scotland: “Beyond the initial five-year strategy, the longer-term ambitions for the site include the creation of a new boulevard connecting the venue to Edinburgh's tram network, alongside the potential for restaurants, bars, cafés, retail developments and hotels that are already in development, that would help transform the area into a thriving destination in west Edinburgh.”

In the media - for instance, here - the boulevard is being described as being a version of the ‘Wembley Way’.

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Obituary published of ‘saviour’ of Edinburgh’s built heritage

AN obituary has been published for Oliver Barratt, remembered for his role in protecting Edinburgh’s historic built environment through the local heritage body, The Cockburn Association.

Said The Scotsman newspaper last week, here: “He fought to protect the historic fabric of the city during a period when the value of historic buildings, architecture and the people who lived and worked in them were not as appreciated as they are today.”

Barratt was the secretary of The Cockburn Association between 1971 and 1992.

He died in April and The Cockburn Association almost immediately published its own tribute, here.

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Water of Leith: challenges and celebrations

SEWAGE discharges and tensions between different types of users - such as cyclists and walkers - are among the challenges facing the Water of Leith at Balerno, Currie and Juniper Green, according to its local MP.

Dr Scott Arthur hosted a meeting, seeking views about the Water of Leith, which also recognised the many benefits of the river, including mental health ones.

As reported, here, on Dr Arthur’s website.

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After Holyrood, has Scottish architecture lost its verve?

THE questions being asked of the Scottish Parliament are: (1) whether it has “strengthened a culture of design that prioritises long-term value”, and (2) whether its “legacy has encouraged more cautious approaches to procurement, cost and risk”.

Find out more at this year’s Festival of Politics, on August 28, in Edinburgh.

Here.

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Perks for paying subscribers

PAYING subscribers of BuildEdinburgh have been able to meet twice recently in person - on June 4, at the ‘Diggers’ pub, and last Saturday, at the Fruitmarket Gallery cafe - to chat about future editorial and possible campaigns.

Since Monday, they have also been given the opportunity to comment on articles on the site.

Comments are being moderated so that they are informative, reasoned, full, insightful and respectful: exactly, how the site as a whole seeks to operate.

With your help, as a paying subscriber, we together could achieve great things.

By being able to hire journalists, the site could become a daily news service (including much more detailed reporting of city council committees) followed at the weekend by long-form editorial.

It is just £30 a year or £3.50 a month. That’s less than £1 a week.

Image details: Canongate; copyright Mike Wilson

FORGIVE the crude mathematics.

There’s a property on Princes Street - being advertised here, online, if not boards on the building itself - with an asking price of at least £3m.

The advert is revealing, insofar as it says that an annual rent of £250,000 is being charged for two ground floor units in the building, which - and here’s where the crude mathematics come in - is comfortably more than the cost of servicing a £3m loan.

As well as the two ground floor units, there are upper floors, which could - following refurbishment - be turned into visitor apartments, to deliver even more of a return (which could be used towards purchasing even more property on the street).

It’s not known whether the city council or a possible ‘Three streets consortium’ (Princes Street, Rose Street and George Street) are considering a bid.

But if either entity were to succeed in acquiring the property, it could signal the start of a slow and steady reconfiguration of Princes Street, to turn it into the ‘world-class’ boulevard that everyone - locals and visitors, alike - would wish it to be.

We might not quite know what ‘world-class’ looks like; but we definitely know ‘poor quality’ when we see it. And Princes Street - and its adjoining streets - is unquestionably less than ‘world-class’. Much less.

All three streets are Edinburgh’s ‘show-off’ streets and, arguably, they together constitute the single most urgent built environment issue among Edinburgh residents - it’s what is most mentioned whenever BuildEdinburgh comes up in conversation.

To own property is to have several options at one’s disposal, including being able to decide who can make use of it and its look. Conversely, to not own property can limit room for manoeuvre, reduced - in the main and in the absence of strict regulation - to having to ask nicely.

It was almost seven months to the day when the city council’s Planning committee (here) sent a proposed ‘Princes Street and Waverley Valley Strategy’ back to the ‘drawing board’, amid concerns about ‘timidity’.

Little has been heard about the strategy since.

If there has been any ‘progress’ these last few months, it’s hardly being advertised.

Previously, this website has suggested (here) what might end up a 25 year-long strategy (it was around 25 years ago when Dynamic Earth was opened) that sees Princes Street becoming predominately cafes and visitor accommodation, Rose Street predominately food and drink and George Street predominantly retail.

It was an idea that fell mostly on deaf ears, the same fate that met another proposal: to host an open design competition for, specifically, Princes Street (here).

Princes Street is not just an Edinburgh street. It’s our shop window to the world, it’s the street that local people should be able to feel most proud about.

One person who clearly thinks a lot about Princes Street is local, renowned architect, Richard Murphy, who last year was advocating a broad new vision for it, here.

This year, he was at it again, this time musing (here) about one of the two corner sites where Princes Street meets Hanover Street, which had a planning application (here, ref: 25/04852/LBC) - to turn it into serviced apartments - recently rejected.

One option for Princes Street is rerouting buses (as happened when the tram tracks were being laid), to enable a narrowing of the street to two vehicular lanes (trams and taxis sharing, maybe with one passing place) and a widening of the northside pavement.

In other words, it does not envisage burrowing under the Princes Street Gardens embankment - as Murphy’s main, above, vision does.

But a difference of opinion is the stuff of lively debate, which could be hosted by an ambitious, entrepreneurial, transparent, hungry-for-ideas standalone organisation.

I move.

And might anyone have a spare £3m?

Mike Wilson is editor of BuildEdinburgh

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

DEEP beneath Scotland’s former mining communities lies a buried resource capable of heating homes and supporting local jobs once again.

It comes from the same underground workings that once powered industry, shaped towns and villages, and defined local economies for generations.

But this is not coal.

When the mines closed and the water pumps turned off, groundwater flooded the tunnels and workings below ground, absorbing heat from the surrounding rock.

That stored heat, continually replenished by the Earth’s natural geothermal properties, can now be recovered to provide renewable, sustainable and low-carbon heating.

This resource is known as minewater geothermal (MWG), and you may begin to hear a lot more about it considering an estimated 25 per cent of the UK’s buildings are above a mine.

That’s about nine million buildings.

Mining in Scotland stretches back more than 800 years, with coal being extracted as early as the 12th and 13th centuries.

During the Industrial Revolution, demand for this ‘black gold’ surged and mines spread rapidly across Scotland’s ‘Midland Valley’, including in and around Edinburgh.

At its peak, after the Second World War and nationalisation in 1947, Scotland had hundreds of mines, over 400, extracting primarily coal, along with shale, iron and other minerals.

When the mines began to close in the second half of the 20th century, the impact was profound, not least among the communities that grew up around them.

Water has always been a challenge in mines, many of which lie below the water table, where tunnels naturally fill with groundwater.

The first steam engine, developed in 1712, was created to address this problem by pumping water out of the mines, allowing miners to reach greater depths.

Scottish engineer, James Watt, famously refined the design in the 1760s, vastly improving its efficiency and helping to kickstart the Industrial Revolution.

Ever since Scotland’s, and the UK’s, mines began closing, the Mining Remediation Authority, previously known as the Coal Authority, and taxpayers have had to manage their damaging aftermath at a significant cost. Water filling the abandoned workings mixes with minerals and contaminants from the mine and surrounding rock, often polluting local streams, rivers and the surrounding countryside.

The Mining Remediation Authority, is believed to treat over 122 billion litres of minewater each year at more than 80 sites across the UK, including 12 in Scotland.

Sites like Junkies Adit (an Adit being a man-made tunnel) in Dalkeith are especially well placed to transform these long-standing financial liabilities into valuable community assets.

When the mines closed and pumping stopped, the tunnels and workings slowly filled with groundwater.

Underground, this water absorbs heat from the surrounding rock and settles at a steady temperature around 10 °C to 20 °C all year round, warmer than winter air and cooler than summer heat.

That consistency is what makes minewater such a reliable source of renewable energy.

To extract this consistent heat resource, heat pumps are used. But what actually are heat pumps? Engineering marvel? Witchcraft? Or a lot of hot air? I’ll try my best to explain, simply.

Inside a heat pump is a sealed loop containing a specific fluid that boils at a much lower temperature than water.

Heat from the minewater makes this fluid turn into a gas, which concentrates the warmth and passes it into a separate water system to heat radiators and provide hot water.

It works like a fridge in reverse: instead of moving heat out, it moves heat in.

Heat pumps are highly efficient, producing around three units of heat for every one unit of electricity, and a consistent source like minewater at 10–20 °C year-round is far more reliable than air (for an air-source heat pump) in the middle of a Scottish winter.

One or more heat pumps are just one part of a loop system, where warm minewater is brought to the surface, its heat then extracted to warm buildings, with the resulting cooled water returned underground to recharge, ready to be used again. This creates a renewable and sustainable heating system.

From Blindwells (in East Lothian) to Brazil, from Clackmannanshire to Czechia and from Newtongrange to the Netherlands, wherever there is mining, past or present, there is the potential to use minewater geothermal for the heating and even cooling of buildings depending on the climate and season.

The Romans famously engineered luxury geothermal bath houses for pleasure over three millennia ago, but you don’t have to go as far back to find the first example of a successful MWG project.

Early examples can be found in Canada and Germany back in the 1980s but it is in Heerlen, Netherlands, where the idea was put to test on a commercial scale in 2008.

It was the subject of a fact-finding tour, reported by the Scottish Government in 2016 - here.

Since the launch of the Heerlan scheme in 2008, it has been a huge success.

Carbon emissions for heating and cooling in Heerlen have dropped by an estimated 65 per cent, and the system continues to be expanded with a target 120,000 homes to be fed by it by 2040.

Data centres and other industries are encouraged to relocate to Heerlen to vent their waste heat down into the mine workings to further enhance the system. Which they have done. Driving economic and climate success in Heerlen.

Closer to home, there is enormous potential.

In Cornwall, Yorkshire, Wales and in Scotland there are viable proposals to make to turn these liabilities into assets.

But it is Gateshead (here, on the UK Government website) which is the trailblazer in the UK. Since 2018 - as reported here, again on the UK Government website - it has supplied 350 homes, education and office buildings with below-average prices for sustainable heating, with ambitious plans to heat another 5,000 homes.

However, it can not be understated that these can be difficult schemes to implement.

As a report - from the British Geological Survey to an UK parliamentary committee (here) - notes: “In Wales, a test scheme in Bridgend explored the feasibility of using mine water for heating.

“The scheme was initiated in 2016 with the aim of harnessing geothermal energy from the flooded former Caerau Colliery to provide heating for approximately 300 homes, as well as community buildings and a primary school.

“However, development was discontinued due to significant technical and commercial uncertainties encountered during the design and development phase - this project highlights some of the complexities and challenges of implementing mine water heating schemes in the UK.”

It can be like trying to hit the bullseye blindfolded, drilling - at considerable expense - boreholes into the ground, not to mention potential issues with inconsistent flows and the build up of oxidised iron ore.

Mine plans were drawn up decades, and even centuries, ago, long before GPS.

But, that said, there is real potential to deliver cheaper sustainable heating (and / or cooling) and create good jobs.

Corey Boyle is a graduate civil engineer at Sweco, specialising in ‘active travel’. Last year, he was awarded (here) the Princess Royal Award for Emerging Engineers - by the Institution of Civil Engineers - for his contribution to the South Sub Tram-Train student group project at Heriot-Watt University.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared - here - on the website, Edinburgh Inquirer, for which grateful thanks.

Image details: Now an industrial estate, previously Bilston Glen Colliery; copyright Mike Wilson

THE 19th edition of an annual data gathering exercise - compiling the likes of health and employment statistics about Edinburgh - is reporting, among many things, a near ten per cent increase in population growth between 2014 and 2024: from 485,270 to 530,680.

The city council’s latest Edinburgh by Numbers survey (here) also estimates that, by 2047, the city’s population will have risen to around 585,838.

The data was published at the end of last month.

Among other findings:

• Edinburgh attracted five million overnight visits in 2024, generating £2.57 billion in total visitor spend - a 14.3 per cent increase on 2023;

• Renewable electricity generation rose from 27.3 GWh in 2019 to a peak of 39.7 GWh in 2023, before dipping to 35.5 GWh in 2024 due to reduced bioenergy output;

• The capital’s median hourly pay is £20.49 – more than any comparable city other than London and over 50 per cent above the UK Real Living Wage;

• 17 per cent of the city’s residents live in relative poverty (households whose income is below 60 per cent of UK median income in the same year) though this is below the national average of 21 per cent;

• Close to 23,000 new trees were planted in the council area as part of Edinburgh’s ‘Million Tree City’ project;

• Around 60 per cent of trips involve walking or public transport, 68 per cent of short journeys under two miles are made on foot or by bike;

• 86 per cent of residents are satisfied with public transport, more than 20 percentage points above the Scottish average;

• Edinburgh has the second-highest number of higher education students per 1,000 residents (140) of all major UK cities, behind Manchester (148);

• The Capital has 36 ‘Green Flag’ parks - over twice as many as Sheffield, the city with the next highest number of parks with the award; and

• 25 per cent of people moving to Scotland from other countries outside the UK come to live in Edinburgh.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• Yes-no decision expected soon on proposed new tram route;

• The story of Edinburgh’s ‘north cycle path network’;

• Upgrade work begun at Saughton Arena sports complex;

• North Bridge reportedly set to fully reopen by August;

• Five more ‘firework control zones’ agreed;

• Councillors reject proposal to open private New Town gardens to the general public;

• Full refurbishment plans announced for Canning Street office block;

• Exhibition next week of King’s Theatre history;

• Football mural graces Princes Street hoarding;

• Further recognition for Edinburgh Futures Institute building;

• Objection being recommended against possible Westfield Court listing;

• Anderson pens peaen to Craigmillar;

• Crowdfunder launched for Colinton community hub;

• ‘Green’ data centres: councillors warned off;

• ‘Lifeless’ street expected to be ‘transformed’ by student accommodation block approval;

• Correction: It’s two shops that were suddenly closed on Princes Street; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Yes-no decision expected soon on proposed new tram route

CITY councillors are to be asked in September whether the plans to build a second tram line in the city (linking Granton in the north with Little France in the south) should proceed or not.

It follows the results of two research exercises - a city council-run online ‘consultation hub’, accompanied by in-person events, and, separately, direct interviews by a market research firm.

Say papers (here) to be considered on Thursday, by the city council’s Transport and Environment committee (here, agenda item 8.1), the council’s ‘consultation hub’, attracted 11,425 responses, while the direct interviews involved 1,209 people.

Broadly, the online consultation exercise delivered mixed results: 53 per cent oppose the whole north-south scheme, 40 per cent support and six per cent neither support nor oppose. And the market research delivered 19 per cent oppose, 47 per cent support and 34 per cent neither support nor oppose.

Section 4.12 of the papers provides details of all the options, including the northern leg of the proposed line going along either Roseburn Path or Orchard Brae.

The papers add: “The outputs from the consultation and market research will inform a strategic business case that is being developed and will be presented to Transport and Environment committee on September 20 when councillors will be asked for a decision on next steps for the trams from Granton to BioQuarter and beyond.

“This could include proceeding with all or any element of the proposal to outline business case stage, subject to funding; proceeding with workstreams to amend the current proposal, subject to funding; ceasing and / or pausing temporarily work on the project.”

It is understood there is no requirement for the Transport and Environment committee to have its decision about the strategic business case ratified (or otherwise) by the full city council.

The story is picked up by, among others, Edinburgh Live website, here.

And The Edinburgh Inquirer’s reading of the papers is Edinburgh ‘warming’ to the proposals (here).

The Scotsman newspaper quotes Cllr Stephen Jenkinson, convener of the Transport and Environment committee, describing the polls findings as “fairly inconclusive” (here).

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, it was being reported that Scottish Government agency, Historic Environment Scotland, have raised concerns about the integrity of Dean Bridge, were the Orchard Brae option to be pursued.

Writes The Herald’s Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco, here, HES is also concerned about the integrity of both North Bridge and South Bridge, for a possible southern leg of the proposed tram line.

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The story of Edinburgh’s ‘north cycle path network’

THE story of one of Edinburgh’s first cycle paths - the ‘north Edinburgh cycle path network’ - is being told by local historian, Andy Arthur, on his website, Threadedinburgh (here).

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Upgrade work begun at Saughton Arena sports complex

WORK has begun, upgrading the athletics facilities at the Saughton Arena sports complex.

Announcing the work, here, operators, Edinburgh Leisure, said: “Funded by The City of Edinburgh Council, the investment will support the long-term future of a site that plays a vital role in the city’s athletics network. [Governing body] Scottish Athletics has identified Edinburgh as one of eight priority regions in its national facilities strategy, underlining the importance of protecting and improving provision in this part of the city.”

The work began on Monday.

The story is picked up by the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

In February, BuildEdinburgh posted the idea (here) of reconfiguring the area largely for housing, to help pay for the construction of a spectator stand (and associated facilities, such as changing rooms, club rooms and a cafe) along the length of the touchline of the 11-a-side artificial grass pitch.

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North Bridge reportedly set to fully reopen by August

NORTH Bridge is reportedly set to fully reopen by the start of the Edinburgh Festivals in August - following years of restoration work

Begins The Herald newspaper’s Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco, here: “Eight years after work first began on Edinburgh’s North Bridge, the finish line is finally in sight. Last week, The Herald was granted an exclusive first look at the renovated Victorian-era behemoth.”

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Five more ‘firework control zones’ agreed

FIVE new ‘firework control zones’ have been approved, bringing the total to 14 areas where private fireworks are restricted around Bonfire Night.

The new ‘zones’ are Liberton Grange, Lochend, Stenhouse/Gaskell Street, West Pilton and Wester Hailes.

They join already-operating (from last year) Corstorphine, Longstone, Moredun, Sighthill/Broomhouse and The Murrays (previously called Gracemount), plus (from two years’ ago) Niddrie, Seafield, Balerno and Calton Hill.

Says the city council, here: “The decision builds on the positive impact of previous years’ measures, with Edinburgh experiencing significantly lower levels of firework-related anti-social behaviour compared with earlier years.”

The story is picked up by, among others, STV, here.

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Councillors reject proposal to open private New Town gardens to the general public

COUNCILLORS have rejected a proposal to open private New Town gardens - on a voluntary basis - to the public in exchange for council maintenance and insurance support.

It followed a motion submitted by Scottish Greens councillor, Cllr Dan Heap, which was considered by Monday’s city council’s Culture and Communities committee (here, agenda item 5.1) - which requested a report by December on the viability of such a scheme, which has taken inspiration from St Andrew Square which has been open to the public since 2008.

But it was voted down, six-to-five. The story has been picked up by, among others, The Herald and The Scotsman newspapers, here and here.

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Full refurbishment plans announced for Canning Street office block

AN office block on Canning Street is set to be fully refurbished, following its purchase by a Scottish property company.

Says Knight Property Group, here, about Atholl Exchange: “[We are] set to undertake a comprehensive refurbishment and repositioning programme, aimed at enhancing the quality and occupier experience within the building. Planned works include the full refurbishment of the vacant floors, upgrades to the atrium, common parts and improvements to the external frontage.”

The story is picked up by the website, Urban Realm, here.

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Exhibition next week of King’s Theatre history

A FREE exhibition about the history of the King's Theatre, in Tollcross, is taking place ahead of its imminent reopening.

It is being held next week at Barclay Viewforth Church, Monday to Thursday (10am to 5pm) and Friday (10am to 4pm).

For more details: here.

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Football mural graces Princes Street hoarding

A PORTRAIT of Scotland footballer, Scott McTominay, has appeared on a hoarding on Princes Street - ahead of the national team playing in the FIFA men’s World Cup, its first match taking place over the weekend.

The hoarding has been erected in front of a gap site (following a demolition) that is scheduled to be taken up by a Ruby Group hotel.

This photo was taken on Tuesday afternoon.

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Further recognition for Edinburgh Futures Institute building

AN Edinburgh building that was named two weeks ago (here) among ten winners of an awards competition run by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), has been twice further recognised.

The Edinburgh Futures Institute - by Bennetts Associates - has taken two of seven ‘special category’ prizes at the awards: innovation and interior design.

Read more, here.

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Objection being recommended against possible Westfield Court listing

THE city council is being asked to lodge an objection should a high-rise block of flats in Gorgie be protected from demolition by a listing from the Scottish Government agency, Historic Environment Scotland (HES).

News that HES might apply a listing to Westfield Court - in which the city council is a ‘minority owner’ - was enough to recently convince members of the city council’s Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work committee (here) to pause a scheme to ‘buyback’ properties in the block, in order to gain a majority to proceed with demolition.

It has been estimated the refurbishment costs for the block are around £500,000 per flat.

The recommendation to ‘object’ can be found in papers (here) being presented to the city council’s Planning committee on Wednesday (here, agenda item 7.3).

The story is picked up by the website, The Edinburgh Reporter, here.

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Anderson pens peaen to Craigmillar

A PEAEN to Craigmillar has been penned by former city council leader, Donald Anderson.

In a column published by the Edinburgh Evening News, here, he writes of sometimes considerable improvement on many fronts: population numbers, life expectancy, employment / unemployment, education attainment levels, car ownership and - significantly - crime.

He also praises the volunteer effort that’s taking place there.

Anderson has a regular, weekly column in the Edinburgh Evening News.

He currently volunteers in Craigmillar, as chair of The Eastern Synergy Group, which brings together ‘Third Sector’ organisations in the area.

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Crowdfunder launched for Colinton community hub

A CROWDFUNDER has been launched to complete the fit-out of a community hub in Colinton.

A target £50,000 is being sought for the hub, which is located in Spylaw Park, for residents in both Colinton and the wider south-west of Edinburgh.

Donate here.

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‘Green’ data centres: councillors warned off

CITY councillors have been warned off seeking to impose a moratorium on the building of ‘green’ data centres.

On Wednesday, members of the council’s Planning committee will also hear (here, agenda item 7.1) - from officers (here) - that the council should not provide its own definition of what a ‘green’ data centre is.

The move follows members of the council’s Development Management sub-committee rejecting a planning-in-principle application (here, 25/04239/PPP) for such a centre, on Redheughs Avenue - as reported, here, on BuildEdinburgh.

There was also an approved motion at a full council meting in March (here, agenda item 8.5) seeking a definition of a ‘green’ data centre.

The story is picked up by The Herald newspaper, here.

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‘Lifeless’ street expected to be ‘transformed’ by student accommodation block approval

BEGINS local architects, 7N Architects, here: “We are delighted that our proposal for student accommodation [here, ref: 25/05524/FUL] for the Ardent Group at Russell Road has been approved by The City of Edinburgh’s Planning committee*.

“The 182-room brownfield development, adjacent to the council’s new cycle path between Roseburn and the Union Canal, will transform a lifeless street and bring new activity to the area.”

* It was Development Management sub-committee, on Wednesday: here, agenda item 7.1. It was approved by a 7-2 vote.

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Correction: It’s two shops that were suddenly closed on Princes Street

LAST week, BuildEdinburgh reported that a trio of adjacent shops had suddenly closed on Princes Street.

That seemed to be the case, last week, but - when we checked on Wednesday - one of the three, 7DaySmart, was open and operating.

Apologies for any inconvenience. The two closed are: House of Treasure and The Edinburgh Gift Vault.

Last week’s BuildEdinburgh has been amended.

Image details: St Andrew’s Catholic Church; copyright Mike Wilson

IT must be Norman. This was the main design stipulation of the 1872 competition for a new church on sloping ground in Low Broughton.

The Catholic Apostolic Church already had a modest presence on Broughton Street, but its leaders wanted something larger and more impressive. They sought a home which would let the congregation grow and give full expression to the elaborate rituals of their worship.

Its spaces should evoke piety and grandeur, awe and exultation but in an architectural style free of perceived ‘papish’ excess.

Robert Rowand Anderson’s winning response was an exercise in massive restraint, which still cheers and solemnises at the corner of East London Street and Mansfield Place.

Measuring 200 ft x 45 ft, its roof summiting at 77 ft, the walls 4 ft 6 in thick, this was an imposing statement of faith at the New Town’s edge. It could accommodate 700, although it’s doubtful whether regular attendance exceeded 150.

The Church was in part a charismatic response to certainties overturned by the French Revolution.

It was formally constituted in London in 1835 by founders who foresaw an imminent Apocalypse and Second Coming.

Their buildings and liturgy were designed to honour the mysterious but real presence of Christ during Eucharists, and to welcome His arrival when the Millennium dawned.

By tithes and donations, affluent worshippers raised the £17,000 needed for the first phase of building. Anderson began in 1873 with a church officer’s dwelling and vast undercroft on which sat the nave, double chancel and apse.

The narthex (entry porch) and circular baptistry were added for a further £4,000 in 1885. Not including furnishings, it cost around £1.3m in today’s terms.

Anderson’s uninterrupted nave afforded clear views of sacraments at the altar. These set pieces were discharged by a hierarchy of clergy comprising an Angel (bishop), elders, prophets, evangelicals and pastors, each in gorgeous vestments. They numbered around 25 in total, supported by a small army of colourfully robed lay deacons.

It was an order repeated above the soaring chancel arch. Here, Phoebe Traquair’s mural (painted in 1893–95) depicts a Heavenly Church with choirs of angels, cherubim and a multitude of the redeemed giving praise. Their textured golden aureoles, crowns and trumpets made the whole interior ‘scintillate and glow’.

It was, said the poet W.B. Yeats, Traquair’s ‘drama of the soul’.

Each day at 6 am, the first of four services began amid specially-composed music, incense and the flickering light of candles and olive-oil lamps. The ceremony, drawn from select Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, was widely acknowledged as beautiful and moving. Worshippers thrilled to the invisible but literal proximity of Christ. Some gave voice to revelations and prophecies in strange tongues.

It was all both sincere and theatrical, a feast for the mind and senses, a vivid contrast to the buttoned-up Edinburgh of sombre Presbyterianism, coal smoke and rain, of mirthless nine-hour sermons and ‘Cabbage Feasts’ in the Glasite Meeting House.

However, since only the institution’s original 12 apostles could ordain new clergy, as they died so the Church itself withered until, in 1958, it disbanded here and in 1971 ceased altogether.

Baptists occupied the narthex for some 20 years, but the rest of Anderson’s structure warehoused bricks until, by hook and by crook, the Mansfield Traquair Trust acquired it in 1998 and set about extensive repair and restoration.

The glorious ground floor can now be hired for events and weddings. But, crucially, the Trust provided for the building’s future by converting the labyrinthine undercroft into open-plan office space – a mezzanine substructure which can be removed if necessary, later.

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations leased this area until last year, but so far no new occupant has been found.

Once again, then, Anderson’s tour-de-force stands underused, patiently anticipating an important arrival.

On clear evenings, its western face resembles some armoured Cyclops glaring at the setting sun. On sodden winter days, its northern elevation darkens in precipitous gloom. I have stood at its southern flank by moonlight, when the church becomes a couchant lion: silent, impassive, waiting for that moment when the spirit stirs and bids it rise.

Alan McIntosh is an author, academic editor and contributing editor of the local newsletter, The Broughton Spurtle.

There are open days at the Mansfield Traquair Centre this summer on June 14, July 12 and August 11–27. Check here for times.

Image details: copyright Alan McIntosh, text copyright: Alan McIntosh

This might be an article about France versus the UK, but there are comparisons, surely, between France and Edinburgh potentially worth reflecting on…

FRANCE has built around 300,000 new homes per year in recent years - roughly the same number that successive UK Governments have set as a target but never achieved.

One significant enabler has been the systematic expansion of tramway networks, with new lines opened across French towns and cities over the past two decades, many explicitly designed to enable suburban housing growth.

To examine whether a similar tram-enabled housing model could be replicated in the UK, we took five senior UK policymakers - with direct responsibility for housing, transport and planning [no names, no pack drill] - to visit three French locations where tramways have been used to unlock development: the Panorama district in Clamart (south-west Paris), the long-term transformation of Le Plessis-Robinson (also south-west Paris), and the Capucins development zone in Angers (near Nantes, towards the Atlantic coast of France).

Participants were interviewed before and after the visit, under Chatham House rules.

The aim was to understand how exposure to real places shaped their view of what might be possible in the UK and what barriers would need to be overcome.

Across all three sites, a number of common characteristics were evident.

First, tramways were not treated as add-ons to existing suburban layouts. They were either integrated into, or used to shape, new districts built at ‘gentle density’: medium-density housing capable of supporting high-quality public transport, local services and a strong public realm.

Second, the management of road space differed markedly from typical UK suburban development. Surface parking was minimised or eliminated.

Streets were narrowed and designed as places rather than traffic corridors.

Underground or communal parking was used to reclaim land for additional housing, which in turn helped fund redevelopment.

None of the schemes sought to eliminate car ownership, but all sought to reduce car use by ensuring that daily needs could be met locally and that tram services were frequent and reliable.

Third, tram and housing delivery were not tightly interdependent. Tramways were delivered as part of regional programmes funded through hypothecated transport taxation, while local authorities simultaneously shaped land use, design codes and public realm.

The two systems progressed in parallel, rather than requiring each tram project to be individually justified as enabling a specific housing scheme.

This reduced complexity.

Underlying these physical outcomes was local leadership of powerful Mayors. In all three locations, long-serving Mayors had articulated a clear spatial vision and pursued it over many years.

Policymakers were struck not only by formal powers, but by the clarity of intent.

Before the visit, participants were cautiously optimistic about tram-enabled development but concerned that UK’s more centralised fiscal system and fragmented land assembly would make replication difficult.

After the visit, there was greater clarity about the structural ingredients that appeared to underpin French success:

• Dedicated and hypothecated transport funding;

• The decoupling of transport investment from specific housing schemes;

• Strong local powers over land, roads and design;

• Standardised and lower-cost tram delivery; and

• The deliberate design of road space to favour non-car travel and avoid on-street parking provision.

There was no suggestion that the French model could simply be transplanted to the UK. The two countries have different institutional histories and political cultures.

However, the visit led to increased confidence among participants that, with sufficient devolution of powers and funding, and with sustained political leadership, similar exemplar schemes could be delivered in the UK within the next decade.

This article is the executive summary (slightly tweaked) from a report recently published by the think tank and urban design consultancy, Create Streets, here - for which grateful thanks.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• Council halts ‘buyback’ scheme at Westfield Court;

• Granton Waterfront: in-person update on regeneration programme;

• International retrofitting conference set for September;

• Big house building programme approved;

• Draft Astley Ainslie ‘place brief’ expected in September;

• RSA annual exhibition ending on the 14th;

• The cost of a weekend break in Edinburgh;

• Craigentinny litter pick;

• Co-chairs appointed to oversee east Edinburgh £20m ‘Pride in Place’ programme;

• Green light for Wester Hailes adventure playground;

• Care facility public consultation events scheduled;

• South Bridge paint job;

• Average house price, Scotland;

• ‘Affordable’ housing construction completed at Blackford;

• Do consider becoming a paying subscriber;

• Duo of Princes Street stores closed;

• Council to withdraw providing factoring service in four blocks of flats;

• Fines regime agreed for visitor levy evasion;

• Call to be made to open city’s large private gardens;

• On the road with the city’s fly-tipping team; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Council halts ‘buyback’ scheme at Westfield Court

FLATS in the Gorgie high-rise block, Westfield Court - which is facing a prohibitively expensive repair bill of circa £500,000 per property - are no longer going to be purchased by the city council, in order to achieve the majority ownership necessary to proceed with demolition.

The council currently owns 32 of the 94 flats in the block (as noted, here, on the council website).

Members of the council’s Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work committee voted 6-5 on Monday (here, agenda item 4.4) to halt a ‘buyback’ scheme, after it emerged the building could be protected against demolition by a ‘listing’ from Scottish Government agency, Historic Environment Scotland (as noted in last week’s BuildEdinburgh, here).

Said papers (here) presented to members: “Officers believe it is likely that listed status will be awarded and therefore feel that the full ownership strategy is no longer appropriate. On that basis, no further work will be undertaken to purchase properties in the block until we are notified of a final decision.”

The story is picked up by, among others, broadcasters, STV (here), and The Herald newspaper, (here).

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Granton Waterfront: in-person update on regeneration programme

AN in-person update on the regeneration of the Granton Waterfront is being held later this month.

A ‘drop-in’ event has been scheduled for the 22nd, taking place between 4pm and 7pm; details here.

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International retrofitting conference set for September

AN international conference - exploring how to reduce energy demand in buildings, enhance building performance, decarbonise heating systems and reimagine how buildings can be reused - is taking place in Edinburgh in September.

Details of the International Retrofit Conference - being organised by innovation centre, BE-ST (Built Environment, Smarter Transformation) - can be found here.

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Big house building programme approved

BEGINS a city council announcement: “Councillors have agreed a programme for this financial year to spend more than £207m on improving and expanding council housing across the city.”

Adds the announcement, here: “On Monday, members of the Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work committee approved the 2026/27 Housing Revenue Account capital programme for investment, which is part of the Housing Revenue Account Budget Strategy 2026/27 to 2035/36.

“The programme includes a commitment of over £111m for house building in 2026-27, contributing to the development of around 4,275 new affordable houses over the next five years.

“This is the first year of a major intervention to address the housing emergency [announced in November three years ago, here] through the allocation of a total £1.3 billion to deliver settled homes over five years.”

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Draft Astley Ainslie ‘place brief’ expected in September

A CITY council-produced draft ‘place brief’ for the Astley Ainslie ‘hospital’ site in Morningside - which is being partly released by NHS Lothian - is expected to be drawn up by September.

Says the Astley Ainslie Community Trust, it hopes the city council will take on board many of the suggestions contained in a Local Place Plan (here) that it has produced for the area.

An update from the Trust, here, begins: “As you may or may not know, there has been increased contractor activity on the Astley Ainslie site, and, probably because of this, inaccurate rumours are circulating.”

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RSA annual exhibition ending on the 14th

QUICK reminder: the annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy (at the bottom of The Mound, and which includes two architecture rooms) ends on the 14th of this month.

Details, here.

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The cost of a weekend break in Edinburgh

A TWO-night stay for two people in a three-star hotel in Edinburgh is estimated to be the most expensive among Europe’s capital cities.

And when other aspects of a weekend stay are factored in - e.g. a beer, bus or train travel into the city centre from the airport, etc - Scotland’s capital has been found to be third most expensive.

According to a survey conducted by the Post Office - here - the two-night stay for two has been estimated at £462, ahead of Barcelona (£457) and Dublin (£455).

In terms of the estimated overall cost of a weekend in Edinburgh, it is third (at £668.10), behind Copenhagen (£670.65) and Oslo (£733.99).

At £248.39, Sarajevo is estimated to be the least expensive weekend break.

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Craigentinny litter pick

A LITTER pick is taking place behind Craigentinny golf course, on Tuesday evening.

It is being organised by the city-wide litter picking group, Edinburgh Trash Club, which is suggesting a 7pm start, meeting at Craigentinny Avenue North (at the Arnold Clark premises).

And, elsewhere, there is a ‘Big Forth Cleanup’ scheduled for August 28-30, as detailed here.

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Co-chairs appointed to oversee east Edinburgh £20m ‘Pride in Place’ programme

TWO co-chairs have been appointed to oversee a £20m scheme - over the next ten years - to help regenerate parts of east Edinburgh, including Niddrie and Craigmillar.

Writes Donald Anderson, former council leader and now, among other things, chair of the volunteer group forum, Eastern Synergy Group: “The Pride in Place fund will help regenerate and transform important neighbourhoods in the east of the city.”

And the co-chairs for the scheme have been named as ‘local campaigners’, Miranda Baird and Bill Wishart.

Continues Anderson, in the Edinburgh Evening News, here: “Targeted spending on improving the public realm, cleanliness and attractiveness of the local environment is at the cutting edge of regeneration and as research in America has proven, improving the local environment in Chicago reduced crime and anti-social behaviour and improved health and wellbeing. The communities of east Edinburgh should see an improvement and soon hopefully.”

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Green light for Wester Hailes adventure playground

PLANNING permission has been given for an adventure playground in Wester Hailes, that will be part-designed by the users.

The scheme - proposed by Wester Hailes Growing Community, which explains the project here - was approved by planning officials, as detailed, here.

The story is picked up by the Edinburgh Evening News newspaper, here.

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Care facility public consultation events scheduled

TWO public consultation events are being held, for people to find out more about plans for a 132-bed residential care facility neighbouring the Braid Hills Golf Centre.

The events are required of the Proposal of Application Notice (PAN) that has been submitted for the Braid Hills Nursing Centre site on Liberton Drive.

The PAN details can be found, here (ref: 26/02266/PAN).

It says: “Proposed replacement of existing 119-bed care home with new 132-bed care home and associated retirement / specialist care accommodation to meet current Care Inspectorate standards.”

The events are both taking place at the site: Wednesday, July, 8, 3pm-7pm, and Wednesday, August 5, 3pm-7pm.

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South Bridge paint job

EXTERNAL painting has been completed on a key building on South Bridge.

Scaffolding was scheduled to be taken down yesterday, at the site near the crossroads with the High Street, to reveal a gleaming frontage comprising mainly ‘Coral Silk’ (PPG no. 11955).

The job was carried out by IRO Painting & Decorating.

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Average house price, Scotland

THE average price of a house in Scotland, in March, was £187,000 - according to the Registers of Scotland.

Says RoS, here, that's 1.6 per cent higher than 12 months ago but 0.2 per cent lower than in February.

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‘Affordable’ housing construction completed at Blackford

CONSTRUCTION has been completed on what is being described as the ‘first affordable homes in Blackford for 60 years’.

Says house builder, Cala, the 12 homes - on the site of the former St Crispin’s School - have been handed over to social housing specialists, Wheatley.

The story is picked up by ProjectScotland.com, here.

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Do consider becoming a paying subscriber

LAST night, a group of paying subscribers met at ‘The Diggers’ pub, to brainstorm ideas for website - ranging from Princes Street to Granton to cohousing - and how to begin building a social media presence.

There was a real energy and lots of laughter too, and you can be part of it by upgrading your free subscription to paying.

Soon, paying members will get to decide what editorial the site should seek to pursue over the coming weeks.

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Duo of Princes Street stores closed

NO sooner had they appeared on Princes Street, but two adjacent stores have been closed: House of Treasure and The Edinburgh Gift Vault.

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Council to withdraw providing factoring service in four blocks of flats

THE city council is to withdraw from providing a factoring service in four blocks of flats where it is a ‘minority owner’.

The decision - taken by the council’s Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work committee, on Monday (here) - concerns Coillesdene House in Joppa and Saunders Street blocks in Stockbridge.

The story is picked up by Edinburgh Live website, here.

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Fines regime agreed for visitor levy evasion

ACCOMMODATION providers who evade charging a levy on visitors for overnight stays in the city, face a fines regime - with fines of up to £49,350 theoretically possible.

A fines framework was approved by the city council’s Policy and Sustainability committee (here, agenda item 7.3).

The levy comes into force on the 24th of next month, as detailed here.

For individual short-term lets, the proposed fines framework (here) anticipates between £1,084 and £3,983.

The possibility of nearly £50,000 would apply to commercial operators. But papers presented to committee members also anticipate a fine for them as low as £405.

The story is picked up by The Herald newspaper, here, and Edinburgh Live website, here.

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Call to be made to open city’s large private gardens

A CALL is to be made on Monday, for a voluntary scheme that could see the city’s large private gardens - such as Charlotte Square - opened to the general public, potentially in return for maintenance and insurance being provided by the council.

Cllr Dan Heap has tabled a motion - to be considered by the city council’s Culture and Communities committee (here, agenda item 5.1) - requesting a report by December on the viability of such a scheme, which is taking inspiration from St Andrew Square which has been open to the public since 2008.

The story is picked up by The Herald newspaper, here.

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On the road with the city’s fly-tipping team

IT costs an estimated £2m a year for the council to clean up fly-tipping, according to a feature on the Edinburgh Inquirer website, titled, ‘On the road with the city’s fly-tipping team’. Read it here (subscription required).

All images: copyright Mike Wilson

THERE are patches of municipal grass in Oxgangs which - were local residents of a mind - could be turned into communal gardens, with all the food and mental health benefits that could potentially follow.

But they haven’t - notwithstanding the existence of a group of local residents that go by the name, Oxgangs Community Gardeners - and it’s not difficult to speculate why.

It can feel quite exposing for individual households to pipe up with an idea for their locality, the possibility of ridicule and finger-pointing being too much to contemplate.

It most likely requires a third party to parachute in with a project and just get on with it or to have a set of pre-conditions set in stone at the get-go.

If the latter, it’s instructive to reflect on the near universal observance of the ban (introduced 20 years ago) on smoking cigarettes in indoor spaces. If there was a fear of people simply sticking two fingers up at the regulation, it almost entirely never happened.

So, in a similar vein, it could be that whenever the city council embarks on its next ‘affordable’ housing scheme, it thinks beyond any already existing requirements of residents, by adding a handful more.

As frequently mentioned on BuildEdinburgh, residents could potentially save themselves hard cash by sharing stuff.

This culture could be easily built into the bricks.

People could share cars - and BuildEdinburgh has explored how this could be practically achieved, here - power tools and even washing machines (again, BuildEdinburgh has advice on this topic too, here).

And of course, depending on what - if any - spare land there is, residents could run a communal garden (with accompanying potting shed, raised beds, cold frame, greenhouse, compost heap, rainwater harvesting, etc kit).

It all depends on what stage of a housing development residents begin to get involved.

At the end, when properties are being allocated (which is the assumption of this writer), or at the beginning (which is the hope)?

Administratively, there should not be much difference between placing residents at the start of the process to having them at the conclusion.

Maybe a workshop or two, the serving of tea and coffee and a facilitator (who could be part of a voluntary network, in the same vein as the charity, MCR Pathways, provides volunteer mentors for young people).

All the facilitators would require to have to hand is a menu of the options: car and bike sharing, recycling and refuse, a residents’ handbook (as in here, on BuildEdinburgh), communal gardening, power tools sharing, gym facilities, ‘later living’ requirements, communal laundry facilities, litter picking, storage space, social and meeting space, repair and maintenance, wildlife havens, acoustic and thermal insulation, elevator access, bowling greens and tennis and pétanque courts, acoustic and thermal insulation, super-secure door entries, outdoor seating and lighting, secure car and bike parking, guest bedrooms, children’s play park, bulk buying of provisions, adjacent properties for extended families (not least for those with caring responsibilities), trees, common insurance, dedicated indoor space for young people, book clubs, crafting space, spring flowers, sanctuary courtyard, solar panels, balconies, ground floor retail, co-working space, treatment rooms and offices, etc, etc.

And then walk people through each of them.

It is a simple choice: set the parameters at the beginning or hope for the best after the ‘ship has effectively sailed’.

And out of the whole exercise might emerge that most valuable of commodities: trust.

Imagine the bonds of trust that could emerge if residents were to sit down together and agree how their housing might be designed (of course, there could be fallings out; but at least being forewarned is to be forearmed).

From the state’s perspective: potential savings in repair and maintenance bills, in policing budgets (reduced anti-social behaviour?) and health budgets (the mental and physical health benefits from ‘cohesive’ communities).

And with recent research from The David Hume Institute (here) suggesting that cost-of-living worries are the single biggest concern among Scots, the sharing culture underpinning this proposal could save households quite a bit of money too.

Mike Wilson is editor of BuildEdinburgh

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

A BUNCH of us from school in Glasgow used to take the train through to Edinburgh to watch rugby internationals at Murrayfield.

The routine was always the same. We’d get off the train at Haymarket and walk to the stadium. Game over, we’d proceed to Princes Street and up the Mound, to Deacon Brodie’s Tavern.

The pies were good and so was the beer. Then down the hill to Waverley for the train home.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to have bumped into Robert Louis Stevenson or Deacon Brodie himself on those evenings, such was the intimate atmosphere of mystery and menace in the wynds and closes of the Old Town.

So I was thinking Murrayfield, home of Scottish rugby, as my favourite building - a structure really, back then open to the elements and no seats, except for the spectators in the West Stand.

Wrap-around cover was fitted in the 1990s when an impressively-engineered web of steel created an all-seat venue, albeit with a reduced capacity of 67,000 spectators; previously, more than 100,000 fans could get in.

Deacon Brodie’s is a favourite as well, but its story is well-known.

There are many buildings in Edinburgh associated with booze, such as Dynamic Earth, high-tech in the shell of an old brewery. My current choice is the Port of Leith Distillery, designed by Glasgow architects, ThreeSixty, and opened three years ago.

My nephew, partial to ‘a wee dram’, he confessed, was in town for a few days, so I suggested we do a tour.

Easy to book online, ‘tasting experience’ included.

We took the tram from Princes Street to Leith and got off at Ocean Terminal.

Expecting something picturesque, my nephew took one look and gasped, “Is this it?”

We walked on to the distillery. It cannot be described as picturesque but it’s a more refined piece of architecture than Ocean Terminal, the shopping mall built about 2000 on the site of the Henry Robb shipyard.

The distillery is a steel-framed, nine-storey structure that expresses perfectly the modernist dictum, ‘form follows function’.

Basically, it’s a box, but what a box! It was constructed on an almost impossible site, constrained by water and Ocean Terminal. The only way to go was up. It wasn’t conceived to be so, but it evolved to be Scotland’s first vertical distillery and is the tallest distillery in the world.

The tour takes you through the partly gravity-fed production process - grain milling and mashing at the top, descending through fermentation to the hand-crafted copper stills at the bottom.

Every aspect is visible and spotlessly clean. Environmentally-focussed too.

As the guide explained to our group, the barley is locally-sourced and malted, cutting food miles and the carbon footprint. The building includes events spaces, offices, a shop and, of course, a bar.

Whisky is not new in Leith, where bonded warehouses have traditionally stored the ‘water of life’ for maturation, bulk sale and export.

Leith was Scotland’s premier port until Glasgow eclipsed it in the 19th century, but it remains the nation’s largest enclosed deep-water harbour, used by ships that service North Sea oil and gas fields and offshore wind farms.

There is a cruise ship terminal and the Royal Yacht Britannia, now a tourist attraction. Forth Ports secured the right to display the historic ship after it was decommissioned, in 1997.

In the distillery bar on the eighth floor, you can have a wee dram and a bite to eat.

Outside, the marine traffic, the port’s cranes and Britannia look like toys. “Great view,” we agreed and raised our glasses.

“Cheers!”

Robin Ward is an Edinburgh-based architecture critic, writer, graphic designer and a graduate of Glasgow School of Art. The Port of Leith Distillery is featured in his book, The Pocket Guide to Edinburgh’s Best Buildings, published by Birlinn in 2025.

Text copyright: Robin Ward; image copyright: Mike Wilson

THERE were lots of good ideas swirling around the magnificent main chamber at the City Chambers a couple of Tuesdays back, as a panel debate began to unfold about Edinburgh’s tourism challenges.

And in many ways, the diversity of opinion - among the panellists and including the audience - reflected the patchwork of opinions I encounter in my job on an almost daily basis.

One person’s welcoming of new jobs in the tourism, hospitality or construction sectors is often another’s frustration, perhaps even anger, with crowded pavements and property prices rising ever higher .

The event - hosted by heritage body, The Cockburn Association, as part of a wider Festival of Europe Scotland - heard of residents taking to the streets, particularly in Spain, demonstrating against the impact of high visitor numbers on local infrastructure and the ability to rent or buy an affordable home.

It also heard how places such as Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, are trying to influence the type of tourist (and their behaviour) choosing to visit their town or city.

It was as fascinating as it was wide-ranging.

Positively, over the next few years, I have no reason to believe that visitor numbers to our city (from both abroad and the rest of the UK) will abate any time soon. Even though we have challenges with rising costs, the direction of travel seems to me to be inevitable.

Already, Edinburgh is estimated to be the ninth-busiest tourist destination in the world- in terms of the number of tourists versus the number of locals (as noted on BuildEdinburgh, here).

That is inevitably going to throw up new challenges and exacerbate already-existing ones.

But rise to these different challenges the city must, not least in how it conducts public-facing, grown-up debate as to what to do next. The difficulty is that there are so many moving parts to the tourism question.

The reassurance for local people is that what is usually ‘good’ for tourists is also ‘good’ for them. And vice versa, of course.

Our tourism growth has driven new and fantastic assets for residents to enjoy such as the St James Quarter, the Johnnie Walker Experience, Gleneagles Townhouse, Edinburgh Grand and the raft of new hotels, bars and restaurant venues across the city.

The number of our residents employed in retail and hospitality is rising, bucking trends elsewhere.

If a vennel, close or Princes Street is improved because of tourism, that’s going to be good for all of us.

There’s been a huge amount of private investment recently in Edinburgh’s city centre - an estimated £3bn over the last ten years.

On Princes Street alone, not only is there the ongoing refurbishment of Jenners department store - into hotel, retail and hospitality space, there are Ruby and Zedwell hotels being built and a fantastic Chris Stewart Group development on the corner of Shandwick Place - all products of the tourism sector.

Not only does that represent employment and supply chain opportunities for the local economy, it can also mean the preservation of the city’s heritage (witness the recent approval, at the second time of asking, of a hotel plan for the Rose Street Theatre, which was otherwise facing increasing deterioration).

Often, a building refurbishment or new-build spills over into pavement and other urban realm improvements.

Perhaps that relationship between private investment and city benefit could be better articulated, if not standardised, albeit we now have in place a set levy being charged for overnight stays by visitors, the proceeds of which are already beginning to fund physical ‘improvements’ to the city.

The city’s tourism strategy - and its commitment to sustainability, fair work and ‘net-zero carbon emissions’ targets is a strategy aimed at managed growth.

We have developed a world-class tourism product that is a key economic driver for the city.

We cannot take this for granted and must work collectively as a city to support this managed growth while addressing challenges this growth will have on the city.

The world’s economy is certainly not stable, and we need to continue to invest and support the tourism sector in uncertain times.

Tourism is here to stay (pardon the pun) and we should be proud that Edinburgh is considered attractive enough for people to want to visit, spending both time and money. It means we are doing some things right.

What we need, however, is continued communication between business, resident and heritage groups and not be scared of the tough conversations.

Tourism and its impacts on the city have been a success story over the last decade, we need to support the managed growth over the next decade, ensuring the benefits for residents, business and our visitors are plain for all to see.

Roddy Smith is chief executive of the city centre ‘business improvement district’, Essential Edinburgh.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

All images copyright Mike Wilson