SANDY Bell’s is a pub of stories. Proudly declaring itself to be the ‘home of world-renowned folk music’, plenty of other people are better placed than I am to tell you of the history of the pub, particularly its associations with the folk music revival.

The premises are a former corner shop on the ground floor of an imposing Edinburgh Old Town tenement.

Despite some tough times, it remains a convivial mix of locals, students and tourists.

Online reviews are usually excellent with a few folk highlighting the downsides of cramming lots of people into a small space, with limited facilities and, as a ‘wet’ pub, no bar meals.

This couthy place doesn’t suit everyone, but I loved it from the first time I came to Edinburgh.

Now, it has become place for good tunes and memorable encounters.

It’s not for the architectural merit that this is my favourite building in Edinburgh.

I play music there and have done so regularly for over 25 years. I’ve had a birds-eye view of the ebb and flow. As people come and go, I’ve had conversations and played music with all sorts of people that I wouldn’t otherwise have met.

There are, of course, people who take lots of photographs, fail to buy a drink and leave.

We often get fellow musicians from out of town looking for a tune and, just recently, we were sketched at play by a couple of young women from the Netherlands off the next day on the North Coast 500.

Tourists come in all guises. Canadians, Americans (some disguised as Canadians) and Australians looking for their ancestors and good whisky. A couple from the USA who were befriended by our late departed concertina player remain good friends and regular visitors, wistfully looking to decamp to Edinburgh, full-time.

Recent times have been memorable, sometimes wild, at others rather poignant.

The Italians on a works outing from an Irish bar in Turin will not forget their trip to Edinburgh. The same night there were some international students from London.

Steel drums are not a traditional instrument in Scottish or Irish music, but one of them did a great job of joining in. Unconventional and joyous.

We had great tunes with some musicians over in Edinburgh from Ireland for a funeral.

Their singer, formerly of a ‘raucous, fun and captivating’ Irish band was coaxed to sing a beautiful ballad by our piano player. Another time, they graciously gave up their seat to a New York jazz pianist who had a go and decided better of it.

We’ve had other stars here too. Some lie low or stay at the bar. Local friends who know the ropes might make sure to get them the right seat.

For many people, live music is a rare treat. But many talented people come to Scotland to hear music and, in the process, share their own. Luckily for us, a fieldtrip to study unaccompanied Gaelic psalm singing in the Hebrides might well start in Sandy Bells.

Fascination with the banjo led a young Moroccan woman to share clips of Berber music played on the same instrument.

Pubs like this are a great shared space. Room for spontaneity, connection and learning about each other and what we share. They show the best of what a city can be. And when I’m a tourist myself, I remember that.

Dr Cathy Sharp had an early career as a housing and planning policy researcher and was once the research manager at Scottish Homes. She founded Research for Real in Edinburgh in 2002 and now draws on her experience to write Grow as We Go. She is recognised in the UK and internationally for work that challenges thinking and practice about leadership, participation, research, learning, and evaluation. She is an Honorary Professor in the School of Health at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson; text copyright Cathy Sharp

THIS is not really a Big Idea at all. In fact, it’s a very tiny one - at least in terms of its practical implications, were it to be implemented.

The city council’s determination to be as transparent as possible in its deliberations - not least when its elected members gather to take part in any of several committee meetings - is a bit like justice: not only being done, but being seen to be done.

As things stand, committee meetings are broadcast live, online, with a recording then available for later viewing. They are accompanied by extensive background papers, albeit some can be over-long and technical. And meeting decisions are eventually later communicated in the form of minutes.

It all adds up to a commendable commitment.

But there is one tiny aspect that could do with being thought about.

It is at most evident when main meeting motions are merged with amendments and addendums submitted by elected members on behalf of their political parties.

These additional documents are not always that straightforward to follow.

The language is often procedural and they can very quickly get referred to not by the substance of what is being called for, but simply a paragraph number (often in parts, eg 1.1.2.4).

And in a flash, the vote has taken place (with or without those numbered amendments / addendums meshed in) potentially leaving us mere onlookers - the general public and the media, alike - wondering what exactly has been decided.

In the absence of a plain language summary being voiced at the conclusion of a vote, the risk is misunderstanding (including among elected members themselves), misreporting and confusion.

It’s a two-minute gig, at worst, to neatly wrap up what has just taken place.

And it would certainly save BuildEdinburgh having to trouble the city council’s media team, asking: Have I got this right?

Mike Wilson (who still hasn’t quite worked out the difference between an amendment and an addendum) is editor of BuildEdinburgh

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

THE Karl-Marx-Hof on Vienna’s Heiligenstädter Strasse is hard to miss. Completed in 1930, it stretches for more than a kilometre, rises to six storeys and announces itself with an entrance archway of palace-like scale.

It housed 1,382 working-class families. It was built, quite deliberately, to make a statement: that the quality of homes provided to ordinary people is a measure of the seriousness of a city’s intentions towards them.

Nearly a century later, the Karl-Marx-Hof is fully occupied, well-maintained and well-regarded.

It has outlasted several political regimes, borne witness to tragic and seismic events and any number of fashions in housing policy. This is not sentiment. It is evidence that the decision to build well was also, in the long-run, the economical one.

Vienna has not abandoned this tradition. Around 60 per cent of the city’s residents live in subsidised or municipally-supported homes, managed through Wiener Wohnen or through limited-profit housing associations. The scale is remarkable. But it is the quality, not the quantity, that Edinburgh should dwell on.

These are not anonymous blocks. They are carefully-designed, robustly-built, and, crucially, varied in scale, tenure, and social mix.

This is where Vienna’s model feels particularly resonant in an Edinburgh context.

The city’s housing does not segregate affluence from affordability but deliberately interweaves them, producing neighbourhoods that are socially and architecturally diverse.

Large courtyard blocks sit alongside smaller interventions. Family housing exists beside homes for older residents. Subsidised rents coexist with market units. It is a composition that fosters stability without uniformity.

Such an approach echoes the urban thinking long associated with Patrick Geddes [considered to be the ‘father’ of modern town planning] and later defended by The Cockburn Association, a commitment to preserving a rich mix of scale, use, and social life within the city, particularly in the Old Town.

Geddes understood that cities thrive not through separation but through proximity: of incomes, of generations, of building types. Vienna, in its own way, has operationalised that principle at scale.

A Viennese social housing tenant does not live in an inferior building in an inferior part of the city.

She lives in a well-considered building in a mixed neighbourhood, maintained with the same care extended to everything else.

Buildings that people want to live in, because they are dignified, well-integrated and socially balanced, do not generate the same social or physical repair bills as those that people come to resent.

Good housing is a public good - not a welfare provision, not a residual category for those priced out of the market, but a contribution to the city that will be judged for a 100 years.

Edinburgh’s housing pressures are acute. Tens of thousands are on the waiting list for social rent.

Key workers and young households are being steadily pushed outward. The political response has focused, understandably, on numbers: how many homes, how fast, on which sites.

These are necessary questions. They are not the only ones.

A city that builds large numbers of poorly-designed homes does not thereby solve its housing problem; it defers it while creating new ones.

The record of several post-war and later housing developments in parts of Leith and north Edinburgh offers a quieter but no less telling illustration.

Estates built quickly and cheaply, with limited attention to materials, maintenance, or shared space, have required repeated cycles of repair, retrofit, and, in some cases, partial redevelopment.

They were not structurally unsound in any dramatic sense, but they often proved socially and environmentally fragile, places that could feel neglected rather than cared for.

Cheapness at procurement stage is rarely economy over the life of the building.

Edinburgh’s own housing history is instructive in both directions. The Garden City-influenced cottage layouts at Longstone and Stenhouse produced streets and shared spaces that remain genuinely pleasant nearly a century later.

These were not luxury buildings; they were considered ones.

The system-built estates at Wester Hailes and parts of Craigmillar, where industrialised construction was prioritised over design, produced environments that residents found difficult to inhabit and which the city has spent subsequent decades repairing at considerable public expense.

The flatted development that filled the Western Harbour from the early 2000s suggests the lesson was not fully learned.

Built by private developers in materials chosen for cost rather than durability, it looks poorly after barely 20 years: render stained, details mean, spaces between blocks cheerless.

Nobody has described these buildings as the heritage of tomorrow.

They are exactly what architecture critic, Owen Hatherley, meant - here, in Prospect magazine, in 2017 - when he wrote: “Much contemporary architecture in the city is judged not on what it does, but by what it doesn’t do - if it’s in keeping, if it’s not in the way of any of the sightlines, then wave it through.”

Vienna suggests a different standard is achievable on the same budgets.

At Granton Waterfront, where the city council holds the majority of the land and leads the first development phase, there is an unusual opportunity: to commission housing that reflects what the city actually believes its future residents deserve.

Vienna’s Gemeindebauten are not extravagant - they are carefully-made, humanly-scaled and built for the long-term.

The practical difference between a building worth living in after a century and one deteriorating in 20 years is primarily a matter of priorities.

Craigmillar, where the masterplan is still producing new housing phases, and Leith Fort, where regeneration of the former military site north of the Kirkgate is under way, offer similar openings.

Public bodies are direct commissioners in all of these places. They have a choice that private developers on speculative sites simply do not.

Exercising that choice well requires procurement that rewards quality.

In Scotland, the structure of public procurement too often does the opposite: fee competition continues to favour bids selected on cost rather than design ability or long-term value.

Germany and the Netherlands use paid design competitions for public housing as standard.

The result is visible in the cities.

Scotland has an Architecture and Design Scotland agency, a government architecture policy, and strong placemaking commitments in the National Planning Framework (fourth edition).

It also has a procurement system that makes the realisation of all of this difficult for the practices best equipped to deliver it. These things cannot coexist without consequence.

Several Edinburgh practices have already demonstrated that publicly-commissioned housing in this city can be well-made and worth living in.

What they need is not encouragement or policies or further consultation. They need commissions. That is a political choice, available right now.

James Garry is assistant director of The Cockburn Association.

A version of this article appears on the Association’s website, here - for which, grateful thanks.

Image details: New housing in Craigmillar; copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• ‘Apart-hotel’ planning application resubmitted for whole tenement block in Tollcross;

• Construction work begins on 55 ‘affordable’ homes;

• Housing assurance given for ‘Muirhouse One’;

• Braid Road ‘modal filter’ survives long-running traffic-calming saga;

• Energy efficiency upgrades in store for 34 Edinburgh flats;

• Residents interviewed on video, giving ‘thumbs up’ to new housing in Granton;

• Self-catering accommodation data details said to have been updated;

• Airport chief quoted, admitting arrivals hall ‘very industrial and dated’;

• Leith Links toilets expected to be soon reopened;

• Two, new Local Nature Reserves designated for Edinburgh;

• Almost a third of Edinburgh people estimated to be worried about losing their home;

• Montgomery Street Park gets itself a tiny pond;

• Litter Pick taking place at Hidden Door festival site;

• A third of Quartermile property owners based outside the UK;

• Funding encouragement for resident-designed housing;

• Teviot Row House among Scottish Design Awards nominations;

• Permission being sought to colourfully repaint Hope Street Police Box; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

‘Apart-hotel’ planning application resubmitted for whole tenement block in Tollcross

A PLANNING application has been resubmitted, to turn a whole tenement block in Tollcross into an ‘apart-hotel’.

The scheme - here, ref: 26/01920/FULSTL - is for 27 Home Street, and follows the refusal, in February (confirmed here), of an application (here, ref: 25/04862/FULSTL) last October.

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

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Construction work begins on 55 ‘affordable’ homes

CONSTRUCTION work has begun on delivering 55 ‘affordable’ homes at the corner of Old Dalkeith Road and The Wisp.

The scheme - part of a wider ‘Edmonstone Estate’ development - is being led by housing association, Sanctuary Scotland - as it reports, here.

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

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Housing assurance given for ‘Muirhouse One’

AN assurance has been given that a single remaining resident of a block of flats in Muirhouse due for demolition will receive ‘suitable accommodation’ when - as expected - legal proceedings are concluded and the demolition goes ahead.

The assurance came, following a question by one of the members of the city council’s Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work committee, which met on Tuesday, here.

Said papers (here) presented to the committee: “Since the last update in February, works have been ongoing to safely secure Inchmickery Court against unwanted access. There is one remaining tenant in the block, so essential services are being maintained while the eviction process proceeds through the Sheriff Court.”

Two blocks of flats - Oxcars Court and Inchmickery Court - have been scheduled for demolition (not renovation, due to costs, as noted, here, on BuildEdinburgh).

The assurance was provided following a question from Cllr Lesley Macinnes (around the 1.04:00 mark, on the webcast, here).

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

Braid Road ‘modal filter’ survives long-running traffic-calming saga

THE long-running saga about traffic-calming measures and car parking restrictions between the Braids estate and James Gillespie’s Primary School - taking in also Comiston Road - appears to have come to an end, with a decision to retain some ‘modal filters’, such as Braid Road, and remove some, such as Canaan Lane.

On Tuesday, members of the city council’s Traffic Regulation Orders sub-committee met (here) to ‘finally’ consider which measures to remove, keep temporarily, modify or make permanent.

To be retained: Whitehouse Loan at Warrender Park Road, Whitehouse Loan at Strathearn Road and Braid Road at Hermitage Drive. Meanwhile, being removed: Canaan Lane, Hermitage Gardens and Braid Avenue.

‘Finally’, insofar as the deliberations thus far have been mired in, among other things, wording errors, consultation exercises that have been met with scepticism, a seeming reversal of earlier decisions by elected members, a censure of two councillors and highly polarised views among the general public.

The decision to retain the Braid Road filter followed a 5-4 vote in favour of a verbal amendment suggested in the room.

It is understood the decisions regarding the filters to be removed will be reviewed in six months’ time.

Further reading, here.

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Energy efficiency upgrades in store for 34 Edinburgh flats

THIRTY-four flats in Edinburgh - managed by the housing association, Viewpoint - are to be upgraded, to make them warmer and more energy-efficient.

Says a media release, the flats - in Cluny Gardens, Oswald Road and Charterhall Road - are to be upgraded by energy efficiency specialists, Union Technical.

Adds the release: “As part of the wide-ranging work, the company will improve insulation in lofts, cavity walls and garages, repair external rendering, provide draught-proofing and improved ventilation, as well as full window overhauls and installation of smart heating controls.

“The contract, Union Technical’s first for Viewpoint, was awarded under the National Retrofit and Decarbonisation Framework, a procurement route designed to fast-track energy efficiency improvements in homes across the country.”

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Residents interviewed on video, giving ‘thumbs up’ to new housing in Granton

RESIDENTS of ‘Western Villages’ - comprising new housing in Granton - have been interviewed for a video (now on the video sharing platform, YouTube), giving the scheme an enthusiastic ‘thumbs up’.

The video was put together by the city council and can be checked out here, on the council website.

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Self-catering accommodation data details said to have been updated

A CITY council spokesperson is said to have apologised for correspondence with a ‘self-catering apartments professional’ not being accompanied by an explanation of how personal details are kept by the council.

Writes Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco, under an ‘exclusive’ banner in The Herald newspaper, here: “A council spokesperson acknowledged that the relevant privacy notice had not been made available, but told The Herald that it had now been uploaded online.”

It is not clear to what extent the omission whether will be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office and what, if any, impact it will have on the rollout of the city’s upcoming visitor levy scheme (a modest charge on visitor overnight stays, to help pay for various ‘visitor-related’ projects in the city).

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Airport chief quoted, admitting arrivals hall ‘very industrial and dated’

THE chief executive of Edinburgh airport has been quoted, saying the airport’s arrivals hall is “very industrial and dated” and “not the standard we aspire to”.

Gordon Dewar was quoted in an article by The Scotsman newspaper’s transport correspondent, Alastair Dalton, here.

Dalton continues: “The airport said the hall would be replaced as part of a major redevelopment of the terminal, but declined to provide a timescale.”

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Leith Links toilets expected to be soon reopened

PUBLIC toilets at Leith Links are expected to be reopened at the beginning of next month, after being closed in December to allow repair work to be carried out by the city council.

According to correspondence received by the local community council, here: “Drainage remediation works have begun on site during the week commencing May 4.

“The construction works are expected to take approximately three to four weeks, followed by reinstatement of the surrounding area and testing of the drainage system before reopening.

“We are currently targeting completion by the beginning of June, subject to final testing and verification.”

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Two, new Local Nature Reserves designated for Edinburgh

TWO new nature reserves are to be designated in Edinburgh, with an already existing one to be ‘expanded’.

Yesterday, the city council’s Culture and Communities committee agreed to a recommendation from officers, here, to designate Wester Craiglockhart Hill and Little France as Local Nature Reserves and to ‘expand’ (by a further 9.84 hectares) the existing 10.5-hectare nature reserve at Easter Craiglockhart Hill.

Ahead of the meeting, the story was picked up by Deadline News website, here.

At the meeting, an addendum was accepted, to ensure nature conservation work (including scientific studies) by Calton Hill Conservation Trust continues to be recognised.

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Almost a third of Edinburgh people estimated to be worried about losing their home

ALMOST a third of people living in Edinburgh are estimated to be worried about losing their home in the next few years - polling has found.

The poll found the exact figure to be 31 per cent, just below the national average of 35 per cent.

Says Homeless Network Scotland, here, which commissioned the poll: “The research found 35 per cent of people across Scotland are concerned about losing their home because of pressures including the cost of living, a lack of affordable housing, high rents and rising mortgage costs. Concern is highest among 18-to- 24 year-olds, where almost half (49 per cent) share that fear.”

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

Montgomery Street Park gets itself a tiny pond

A TINY pond has become the latest addition to volunteer tending of Montgomery Street Park, just west of Easter Road.

It followed work carried out by at least 13 volunteers on Saturday, as reported on the Facebook page of the Friends of Montgomery Street Park (here).

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Litter Pick taking place at Hidden Door festival site

A LITTER pick is taking place on Sunday, behind the location of the Hidden Door ‘independent arts’ festival in Maybury.

This year’s Hidden Door is taking place between June 3-7, as described here.

Details of the litter pick (which is taking place between 11am and 1pm) can be found, here.

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A third of Quartermile property owners based outside the UK

SOME 263 of the 751 property titles involving properties in Quartermile are owned by individuals or organisations based outside the UK, 95 of them in Hong Kong.

The figures follow a deep dive by the BBC’s Andrew Picken into statistics (here) released in March by the Registers of Scotland (noted by BuildEdinburgh, here).

Writes Picken, here: “The vast majority of property and land in Scotland is registered to people and companies based in the country.

“But RoS data shows, external a total of 28,825 titles - 1.4 per cent of the total - on the land register where the owner had an address outside the UK at the time of purchase.

“Titles in Edinburgh account for 18.7 per cent of the overseas registrations.”

Meanwhile, a fourth-floor, two-bedroom flat in Quartermile - for sale, here, at offers over £595,000 - was the most viewed property, during last month, on the website of the Edinburgh Solicitors’ Property Centre. As noted, here.

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Funding encouragement for resident-designed housing

FUNDING encouragement for resident-designed housing can be potentially found in the shape of a news story about a £50m investment in a build-to-rent scheme.

Reports Scottish Housing News website, here, the funding has been provided by the Scottish National Investment Bank into L&G’s Build-to-Rent Fund.

BuildEdinburgh has been spearheading resident-designed housing (here), but it will take resource to create a ‘movement’.

So, why not become a paying subscriber of the site?

So that BuildEdinburgh can research possible housing locations?

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Teviot Row House among Scottish Design Awards nominations

TEVIOT Row House - considered the world’s oldest purpose-built students’ union - is among the nominations at annual awards celebrating the Scottish design sector.

The building, recently renovated, has been shortlisted in the Conservation category of the Scottish Design Awards, which will be revealing the winners on the 24th of next month.

The architectural section alone of the awards comprise some 18 categories: Architectural practice of the year, Lighting, Interior design, Regeneration and masterplanning, Conservation, Residential - single home, Residential - multi-unit, Affordable housing, Health building or project, Education building or project, Commercial/office/hotel building or project, Public building, Future building or project, Retrofit, Low-cost project schemes under 250k, Public realm/landscaping, Client of the year - architecture, and Young architect of the year.

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Permission being sought to colourfully repaint Hope Street Police Box

PLANNING permission has been submitted to colourfully repaint a former Police Box on Hope Street, next to the Johnnie Walker Experience on Princes Street.

The proposed design - here - has been submitted to city council’s planning applications portal, here (ref: 26/01064/ADV).

Image details: Grange cemetery; copyright Mike Wilson

IF you care about Edinburgh, you will hopefully have developed a deep affection for BuildEdinburgh, as a way of keeping in touch with what’s going on in the city and a source of several possible good ideas.

But, after some 200 posts into the evolution of the site, it’s time for a new chapter.

It’s one thing aggregating what’s already in the public domain, and publishing donated columns and features; it is another carrying out serious journalism.

Serious journalism needs resourcing, and you can help make it happen.

A monthly subscription of £3.50, or an annual one of £30, could begin to make a huge difference to the site (massive thanks to those of you who have already pledged since it was made it possible, only last week).

First up, please be reassured that our weekly updates will remain free to read and produced for free.

But funding from you will help make a significant difference to the type of editorial that the site can run.

Paying subscribers will not only enjoy exclusive access to the content that has had to be paid for, they will also be able to suggest and decide what editorial to pursue in the future.

They will furthermore be able to enjoy exclusive access to a programme of online discussions that is currently being compiled, with several key people and organisations in the city.

Plus, they will have full access to the site’s archive.

Please be reassured: 100 per cent of your pledge will go to improving the site.

Not a single penny of it will end up in my pocket (annual accounts - shared with paying subscribers only - will confirm this).

Instead, your pledge will go towards interrogating land title documents, turning the site into a dot-com (making it much easier to promote - not least to elected members and senior city officials) and, crucially, commissioning freelance journalists and architecture practices to carry out work.

Ahead of next year’s local council elections, BuildEdinburgh aims to be at the heart of the debate.

One possible campaign that appears to be gathering momentum is a call for major projects to be first subject to an open design competition.

To end, don’t worry: BuildEdinburgh won’t be issuing this appeal again for several weeks.

It’s not going to clog up your emails with funding requests.

This is a relatively one-time offer and, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you, in anticipation, for your backing.

Thank you for reading this and please do share with your family, friends and networks - Mike Wilson, BuildEdinburgh

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

AT the southern tip of Lyon, in eastern France - where the Rhône and the Saône rivers converge - a peninsula of railway sidings, warehouses and contaminated industrial ground has been transformed into a neighbourhood of 25,000 residents over the past two decades.

The Lyon Confluence project (here) is not primarily a story about what was there before. It is a story about knowing, in advance, what you want a place to become - and having the institutional means to get there.

The Musée des Confluences - by Viennese practice, Coop Himmelblau - makes an architectural statement.

But the project’s real achievement is the coherence of the whole.

The Confluence was designed to become a city quarter - not a collection of individual planning consents that happened to share a postcode.

It achieved this through three things: (1) a co-ordinated masterplan, (2) a public development company - the SPL (Société Publique Locale) - with the authority and long-term mandate to enforce it, and (3) a political will that survived multiple election cycles.

That third element is the hardest to replicate. It is also the most important.

Edinburgh faces versions of this challenge across several sites, simultaneously.

The Granton Waterfront programme - Granton, Newhaven, the northern edge of Leith - is the largest development opportunity the city has faced in generations, with 3,500 homes planned at Granton alone alongside employment uses and a public waterfront on the Firth of Forth.

Shawfair has been under outline permission since 2003 and is only now beginning to feel like a community rather than a construction site.

At Blindwells, in East Lothian, and Winchburgh, in West Lothian, new settlements are taking shape on Edinburgh’s functional edge, housing people who would otherwise have been competing for homes in the city itself.

Growth areas are not peripheral. They are the city in the process of becoming itself - and what they become, Edinburgh will live with for a very long time.

Lyon’s lesson for all of these places is the same: they need a governing idea, held consistently across phases, developers and decades.

Without it, ambition dissolves quietly.

Environmental commitments made at outline stage soften as viability arguments accumulate.

The housing mix promised in the planning statement concentrates into a minimum affordable quota on the least prominent plots. Public realm shrinks. Quality disappears by a thousand small decisions, none of which individually triggers a refusal.

This is not a theoretical risk.

It is what happened at the Western Harbour in Leith.

Here was a site of comparable scale and real opportunity: a former industrial waterfront connected to the historic port, capable of becoming a genuinely mixed urban quarter.

The masterplan existed. The ambitions were stated. But development proceeded piecemeal, driven by speculative developers, in materials - thin render, plastic windows, cheap cladding - that have deteriorated visibly in the coastal climate.

The promised public spaces are inhospitable. The social mix never materialised. A generation of people now lives there and deserve something better.

The contrast with Lyon is institutional before it is architectural.

The SPL could set the terms of development and hold them across 20 years of changing market conditions.

It could select architects through competition rather than simply approving whoever a developer appointed.

It could refuse permission when proposals fell short.

Edinburgh’s planners have some equivalent powers - development frameworks carry real weight when properly enforced - but the willingness to use them has not always matched the stated ambitions.

And the moments when standards erode are usually small enough, individually, to pass without triggering the scrutiny they warrant.

As Professor Miles Glendinning (here) and others have observed (such as here and here), Edinburgh’s planning debates often concentrate on heritage protection - on preventing bad things in sensitive places - rather than on driving quality where heritage constraints are absent.

Growth areas, where the majority of new ‘Edinburghers’ will live, receive a fraction of the attention that a disputed dormer on the Royal Mile can generate.

Lyon also demonstrates something Edinburgh is slow to act on.

The Confluence has not increased pressure on the city’s UNESCO-inscribed historic districts - Vieux-Lyon, the Presqu’île, the Croix-Rousse hillsides.

It has relieved it.

Growth accommodated elsewhere, at genuinely high standards, takes demand off a historic centre that cannot and should not absorb it all.

Investing in quality at Granton is therefore an argument about the World Heritage Site as much as about Granton itself.

A waterfront neighbourhood worth choosing reduces pressure on a centre that is already strained.

At Granton, the council now holds the majority of the developable land - the kind of direct ownership the SPL had.

The Development Framework was adopted in 2021.

First-phase housing is under construction, with architects, Anderson Bell Christie, delivering the Edinburgh Home Demonstrator: a pilot programme for net-zero carbon emissions homes that, if it works, will set a template for the phases that follow.

But the Western Harbour also had a masterplan, a development company and political support.

What it did not have was the sustained institutional discipline to hold to those ambitions, as development dragged across 15 years and two financial cycles.

Granton will take similar time.

The question is simply whether Edinburgh will hold the line for that long. Lyon, over 20 years, did.

James Garry is assistant director of The Cockburn Association

This article is a tweaked version of a column on the Association website, here, for which grateful thanks.

Further reading: on BuildEdinburgh: Another Take on Granton, here.

Image details: Granton; copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• ‘Affordable’ homes target exceeded;

• The SNP manifesto and Edinburgh;

• Cramond ‘campus’ proposals inch towards a formal planning application;

• Call for entries issued by Scots property awards competition;

• Finalists announced by Scottish Home Awards;

• Sustainable design accreditation for Edinburgh-based architect;

• Edinburgh tenement maintenance - online seminar;

• Mural celebrates the local people of Leith;

• Paying subscribers invite;

• Ministers reportedly warned Scots law lacks the facility to shut down ‘rogue’ shops;

• Tenement tale turns the spotlight on Picardy Place;

• Manifesto issued as cyclists prepare to Pedal on Parliament;

• Wanted: Views on how to potentially ‘improve’ the West End;

• Applications invited for Edinburgh Doors Open Days weekend;

• Litter pick organised for Sighthill Park; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

‘Affordable’ homes target exceeded

ALMOST 1,500 new ‘affordable’ homes were completed by the city council, and its housing association partners, in the last financial year - according to an announcement from the council.

Says a media release, issued by the council, the figure represents “the most completions delivered in a single year since the [council’s] Affordable Housing Supply Programme began”.

The announcement continues, here: “In 2025/26 1,473 houses were completed or purchased for use, beating the target of 1,368, while 994 homes were approved for construction. Work also started at 1,004 sites.

“Almost £74m was spent on affordable housing in the last financial year, surpassing the previous high figure of £55m spent in a single financial year since the programme was introduced in 2007.”

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The SNP manifesto and Edinburgh

WITH the SNP expected to form the next Scottish Government (in whatever guise: minority or majority) - following yesterday’s Scottish Parliament elections - several implications are in store for Edinburgh, should the party’s campaign manifesto to be honoured.

One pledge has already been noted by BuildEdinburgh - here - which is to fund a feasibility study into the possible re-opening of the South Suburban rail line for passenger traffic, as part of a wider ‘Tram Trains’ scheme.

Also on the cards from the manifesto (here) is a walk-in clinic service in north Edinburgh, a possible second Gaelic-medium primary school and a feasibility study into how Wardie Bay and parts of the Water of Leith might be turned into an outdoor swimming facility similar to Copenhagen’s Harbour Baths.

Another pledge - with potentially significant implications for plans for a second tram route in Edinburgh, this time north-to-south, complementing the current Newhaven-airport route - reads: “We support efforts in Edinburgh to retain the Roseburn corridor as a route for pedestrians and cyclists and believe that any tram proposals brought forward and funded by the city council should use an alternative route.

“We will also support efforts to bring the former Powderhall railway line into use as a new walking and cycling route in the capital.”

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Cramond ‘campus’ proposals inch towards a formal planning application

A PLANNING application is expected to be soon submitted for a ‘mixed-use campus’ development in Cramond, including - among other things - sports facilities and a care home.

Being a Proposal of Application Notice (PAN), it is expected public consultation events will be soon held (two have been scheduled, but as yet with no accompanying details) ahead of a formal planning application being submitted.

The PAN follows the developers being ordered ‘to get a move on’ by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee in January (here).

At the time, BuildEdinburgh’s reporting (here) of the sub-committee’s instruction began: “Developers of housing on a site in Cramond - once occupied by what is now known as the Moray House School of Education and Sport - have been ordered to produce a Proposal of Application of Notice (PAN) by April 30, concerning the provision of sports facilities that have been over 20 years in the waiting.”

The PAN notice can be read here (ref: 26/01854/PAN) and concerns the specific address, 34 Cramond Road North.

The story is picked up by the Edinburgh Live and Urban Realm websites, here and here.

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Call for entries issued by Scots property awards competition

A DEADLINE of the 21st of this month has been set for an awards competition celebrating Scotland’s housing sector.

Category titles such as Residential Regeneration Project of the Year and Affordable Housing Development of the Year are up for grabs at The Herald Property Awards for Scotland 2026.

Entry details, here.

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Finalists announced by Scottish Home Awards

MEANWHILE, the finalists have been announced for another awards competition celebrating Scotland’s housing sector.

This year’s Scottish Home Awards will be handing out the prizes on the 18th of next month, with category titles including Renovation of the Year (New Craig at Craighouse among the finalists) and Housing Development of the Year (large private sale) (West Shore among the finalists).

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Sustainable design accreditation for Edinburgh-based architect

AN architect with the Edinburgh office of Purcell Architecture has been awarded ‘Architect Accredited in Sustainable Design’ status by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

Says RIAS, here: “Claire [Cockburn] has RIAS accreditation in both Conservation and now Sustainable Architecture and is also a certified Passivhaus designer.”

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Edinburgh tenement maintenance - online seminar

AN online seminar is taking place next month, about Edinburgh tenement maintenance.

It is being hosted by the Scots tenements charity, Under One Roof, and is taking place on the second of next month.

Details, here.

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Mural celebrates the local people of Leith

A MURAL has been unveiled in Leith, by the recycling social enterprise, Edinburgh Remakery.

The mural - unveiled on Wednesday in Newkirkgate - followed a series of community engagement events, to garner views as to what should be celebrated in the district.

Says Edinburgh Remakery, here: “The mural is more than artwork. It reflects the people, stories and spirit of Leith. It is a piece of the community, made by the community.”

As well as local people being involved in the project, the painting also included local artists, Isabell Buenz and Ross MacRae.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Edinburgh Remakery was recognised by an awards scheme promoting enterprise in sustainable development - a King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development, as announced here and here.

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Paying subscribers invite

EAGLE-eyed readers will have noticed that - from last week - BuildEdinburgh has set up the opportunity for free subscribers to convert to paying ones (either £3.50 a month or £30 a year).

As the site celebrates its first birthday, funding has started to become an issue, not least because ‘solid journalism’ (phoning, researching, interviewing, etc) takes up significant effort and rightly requires paying for - especially if it is to involve commissioning freelancers.

Besides feeling good about supporting the site, paying subscribers will also enjoy access to dedicated content, plus access to exclusive webinars.

Fear not, the site’s weekly aggregation of what’s happening in the city will always remain free to read.

Crucially, they will also be able to help decide future editorial.

BuildEdinburgh now comprises almost 200 posts - most of which are now part of an archive available only to paying subscribers.

Each and every one of them has been produced for free.

The next editor of the site might struggle to be so generous with their time.

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Ministers reportedly warned Scots law lacks the facility to shut down ‘rogue’ shops

SCOTTISH Government ministers have reportedly been told that Scots law does not allow trading standards teams to shut down ‘rogue’ shops, operated by criminal gangs.

Writes Martin Williams - in an ‘exclusive’, here on the front page of the Herald on Sunday newspaper: “The Scottish Government has had a national strategy to tackle organised crime since 2009, when Letting Our Communities Flourish was first published, but concerns remain over whether enforcement powers have kept pace..”

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Tenement tale turns the spotlight on Picardy Place

IT was “part of a terrace [of townhouses] that replaced a village of French weavers”, while more recently it was a Hertz car rental garage: the latest in a series of Edinburgh tenement histories turns the spotlight on 10 Picardy Place.

Read all about it on Diarmid Mogg’s Tenement Town website - which describes itself as “uncovering Edinburgh’s forgotten lives, one stair at a time” - here.

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Manifesto issued as cyclists prepare to Pedal on Parliament

A MANIFESTO has been issued to accompany an annual gathering of cyclists at the Scottish Parliament.

The Pedal on Parliament event is taking place on the 30th of this month (starting at Middle Meadow Walk at 11.30am), and the manifesto (here) primarily has four key aims: Reinstate funding, Redouble efforts, Redress safety and Repair division.

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Wanted: Views on how to potentially ‘improve’ the West End

VIEWS are being sought about how to potentially ‘improve’ the West End.

The local community council has launched an online survey as a prelude to compiling a Local Place Plan, to submit to the city council as it works up its wider planning targets (City Plan 2040).

Already, three communities have produced a Local Place Plan - here - with several others in the pipeline, including from Fairmilehead Community Council and Morningside CC.

The survey can be found, here.

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Applications invited for Edinburgh Doors Open Days weekend

A DEADLINE of the 21st of next month has been set for applications to feature in a festival of Edinburgh buildings.

Doors Open Day is scheduled for September 26 and 27. To find out how to potentially be part of the programme, email here.

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Litter pick organised for Sighthill Park

A LITTER pick has been organised for Sighthill Park - taking place from 11am on Sunday.

Meet at the pavilion on Broomhouse Road.

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Main image details: McEwan Hall; copyright Mike Wilson

Mural image details: copyright Edinburgh Remakery

THE concept of the ‘20-minute neighbourhood’ is all about providing important local amenities within a short distance from where people live.

And, clearly, that requires relatively dense housing. Four-storey apartment blocks hugging narrow, intimate streets - anyone?

Edinburgh now operates a city plan - City Plan 2030, adopted in November two years ago - that explicitly includes the ‘20-minute’ neighbourhood principle (beginning on page eight of the document).

Back in 2021, the Royal Town Planning Institute was recommending (here) 65 homes per hectare, a figure that has been often referenced since (including here and here).

And there is no reason to believe that this position has since changed.

To get a sense of what 65 dwellings per hectare might look like, there is a handy set of examples compiled (here) by the now-closed Manchester design practice, Urbed (that has since enjoyed something of a renaissance, as a Trust, here).

Under the heading, ‘low density’ (ie 40-50 dwellings per hectare), cited as examples are Water Colour (Redhill, Surrey), Selwyn Street (Oldham, Greater Manchester), Trafalgar Street (Rochdale, Greater Manchester), Donnybrook Quarter (London), and Chimney Port Park (Salford, Greater Manchester).

Meanwhile, under ‘medium density’ (65-75 dwellings per hectare): West Side Street Housing (London), Sharrow Point, Cemetery Road (Sheffield), Temple Quay (Bristol) and Western Harbour (Malmo, Sweden)

And in the high density section (120-160 dwellings per hectare): New England Quarter (Brighton, East Sussex) and Hammerby Sjöstad (Stockholm, Sweden).

Mike Wilson is editor of BuildEdinburgh

Images details: Copenhagen, Denmark, apartment block, set at 90 degrees to the pavement and guarded by a buzzer-controlled gate; copyright: Mike Wilson

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I’VE had a connection with the King’s Theatre, which is currently being renovated, for many years; and not just because of the blast that I’ve had - with Allan Stewart, Andy Gray and, now, Jordan Young - with the annual pantomime.

It’s a connection that goes back to my high school days, in the early 1980s.

When I was at school, there was no question that drama was my favourite subject, and I was involved in as many school drama productions as I could.

Friday afternoon’s at James Gillespie’s High School - back then - meant having to hop down to its annex, on Gilmore Place, and of course that meant passing the King’s Theatre.

I was that boy, faced pressed up to the window, staring at the production shots of the show that was on that week. And I was also that boy dreaming of what it would be like to actually get to do that for a living.

I have to admit, it was something of a hammer blow, when - after I finished school - my various attempts to get into drama school all failed. On one occasion - at Edinburgh’s very own Queen Margaret College, as it was then - I was told I had got down to the final two. Ooh, that hurt. And back then, I never really thought of re-applying and trying again.

I just tried to take it on the chin.

You could say my first proper job was working as a police officer, for four years.

But - thanks to fate, a chance conversation, someone looking out for you; call it what you will - I somehow ended up working in children’s TV, which then led, in 1993, to an approach to do panto, at that other famous King’s Theatre, Glasgow’s.

The year after, I was then asked to do panto with the legendary Cannon and Ball, at Edinburgh King’s Theatre, which meant I finally got my photo inside that famous glass window on Leven Street.

In those days, pantos often travelled from one city to another and I went with Tommy and Bobby to Glasgow again, where I stayed for three years before coming back to Edinburgh.

With the exception of the 1999/2000 season and Covid, I’ve done panto in Edinburgh every year since.

One of the things that intrigued me, when I was doing those drama productions at James Gillespie’s is how much rehearsing you’d have to do, compared to how many nights you performed. You basically rehearsed for months to perform for three nights only, the first night usually consumed by nerves.

A panto, by contrast, goes on for weeks, and it’s therefore no surprise that a panto cast can become very close-knit. You become genuine friends with each other, which can translate to a real magic on stage.

Conventional theatre is performed, usually, to how it was intended by the playwright.

Panto, by contrast, can go in all sorts of random directions, usually depending on what the first wise crack is, often something from the audience.

The Edinburgh team grew organically in front of the audience. I had worked with Allan, and also with Andy, and they had also worked together without me in 2000; but there we were - all on the poster together for the very first time - and that was how it started.

We had fun on and off stage and the audience enjoyed our unscripted moments as much as we did and so they came back, year after year. Sadly, we lost Andy in 2021, but the fun continues and this is thanks to now having Jordan as part of the team.

If there is a real family feeling among the cast of a panto, there is a similarly close-knit group behinds the scenes. Some of the stage crew have been around for ages, they just love their jobs that much.

I have no doubt the theatre would have had to close had it not been for the decision to refurbish it - with an expected opening in July.

Structurally, it required so much doing to it; had it been left untouched, it would have had to be closed, probably permanently, on health and safety grounds.

That said, when the audiences pitch up for the first shows in the refurbished building, they might wonder what all the fuss has been about. The renovation has been so delicately handled, every effort has been made to retain the original look and feel.

So, apart from a bit of sprucing up, the main auditorium will probably feel pretty much as it was before the building was closed for the renovation.

However, you wouldn’t recognise the place behind the scenes and front of house.

All this new heavy engineering has been installed, it means there won’t be a theatre production in the UK or abroad that can’t do a show there. It is now that sophisticated.

I’ve been in the building probably about four times since the renovation work began, the last time in January, and it is remarkable what they - the architects, engineers and the construction firm - have done.

I hope to be part of the opening events in July, but - failing that - it will soon be my home from home, in my next panto, which we are about to begin rehearsing for: The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Grant Stott is a broadcaster, actor and ‘pantomime villain’. He has been a regular member of the King’s Theatre panto cast since 2000 and is soon to resume his afternoon presenting role on BBC Radio Scotland.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson; text copyright: Grant Stott

Important notice: Now that we have reached the first anniversary of the site, you can show your support by pledging either a monthly sum of £3.50 or an an annual one of £30 - to help pay for some solid journalism (including the commissioning of freelancers).

Paying subscribers will be eligible for exclusive content and also access to webinars and online discussions as to what content to pursue.

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Thanks, in anticipation, Build Edinburgh

CROSSING the Steinerne Brücke in Regensburg - in Bavaria, Germany - the bridge that has carried people across the Danube for nearly nine centuries, the relationship between a city and its own past becomes unexpectedly legible.

The stone façades of the old town rise on either bank - dense, ordered and readable without effort.

The UNESCO inscription (here) came in 2006, but the city’s confidence in its own character long predates any formal recognition.

Regensburg does not need a listing to know what it is.

Edinburgh will understand some of this.

We live in a city of layered history, where the relationship between old and new is rarely simple and never without argument.

The Festival of Europe Scotland, which runs this month, offers an invitation to look outward - not for novelty, but for honest comparison.

Across Europe, cities with histories as complex as our own are grappling with the same pressures: how to grow, how to house people properly and how to expand without eroding what makes them worth living in.

None of this is easy. All of it is possible.

It is in this spirit that The Cockburn Association is contributing to the festival with a focused discussion on one of the most pressing issues facing historic cities today.

‘Homes or homecomings? Managing tourism tensions’ brings together perspectives from across the continent to explore how cities like Edinburgh can balance visitor economies with the needs of residents - addressing questions of housing pressure, short-term lets and the long-term sustainability of living communities.

The event forms part of a wider European conversation about responsible tourism and civic responsibility.

This four-part series explores four cities. The others are Lyon Confluence: what a governing idea looks like and what happens without one; Vienna: on what a city says about itself when it builds homes for ordinary people; and Hammarby Sjöstad: on closing the gap between what plans say and what buildings deliver.

Each offers a specific lesson. Taken together, they put a question to Edinburgh that we have not yet answered convincingly: are we expecting enough from the places we are shaping?

Regensburg is the right place to begin because it resists the most tempting response to a precious historic city, which is to treat it as a museum.

The Old Town is protected, yes - but protection is not confused with stasis.

The city’s ambitions show most clearly not within the historic core, but in the buffer zones and development sites that connect the medieval centre to the wider city. These transitional territories are where planning convictions are really tested.

Here, new development is expected to meet demanding standards.

Scale, materials and urban grain matter.

Architectural competitions are used routinely to select designers on the basis of talent rather than price.

Social mix is taken seriously too: a meaningful proportion of housing in these areas is affordable, ensuring the city remains inhabited by people of different means, not only by those who can afford to live inside a postcard.

Authenticity is not only architectural. It is social.

A city of beautiful empty buildings, inhabited only by the wealthy, has already lost something that no amount of conservation can recover.

Edinburgh knows this tension without having resolved it.

The Old and New Towns - World Heritage Site since 1995 (here) - are under quiet but sustained pressure: tenements converted wholesale into short-term lets, working households displaced from the centre, development proposals contested in the setting of Calton Hill and along the Cowgate.

These are not abstract planning debates. They are questions about who gets to live here and in what.

The more revealing comparison with Regensburg, though, lies not in the historic cores of either city but in what surrounds them.

Edinburgh’s equivalent areas - the edge of the New Town, the hinterland of Leith’s conservation area, sites along Leith Walk and Easter Road - have produced a troubled record.

Small-scale successes, yes: careful infill where individual architects were given the latitude to work well. But too much development that was approved for avoiding the breaking of rules, rather than for achieving anything worth having.

The architecture critic, Owen Hatherley, writing in Prospect magazine, here (in 2017), wrote, in an article headed, ‘The slow ruin of Edinburgh’, that “the pattern has been large-scale disasters and small-scale triumphs”.

Leith Shore - unfussy infill between older buildings - has worked. Much less so the vast Western Harbour, built during the ‘pre-crash’ years with speculative flatted blocks in materials that have worn badly in the North Sea climate.

‘Failures’ do not happen because Edinburgh lacked the skill to do better.

A clue might be found in an article published (here) by The Scotsman newspaper in 2014, where celebrated and highly-decorated local architect, Richard Murphy, was quoted saying that Scotland was “about the worst place in Europe to be an architect” - not for want of talent, but because public procurement selects architects by price.

He is further quoted, as saying: “Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands almost always have design competitions for new buildings – and are not spending ridiculous amounts.”

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The 17 schools built across Edinburgh under Private Finance Initiative contracts illustrate the point.

All were temporarily closed following the collapse of a wall at Oxgangs Primary School in 2016, after inspections revealed widespread structural defects. The episode (reported here, by the BBC) shows how poor procurement, fragmented responsibility and inadequate quality assurance can result in unsafe buildings.

Regensburg’s approach is not impossible to emulate. High expectations, applied consistently, create cumulative quality over time.

The development sites surrounding Edinburgh’s World Heritage core - in Leith, Granton, the Canonmills area north of the New Town - are not peripheral to the heritage argument. They are part of it.

The character of a historic city is shaped by what it adds, not only by what it keeps.

Edinburgh has the talent.

What is too often denied to its best practices is the kind of public commission that a rational procurement system would deliver to them.

Regensburg has decided what it expects of the places that surround its heritage, and it expects it consistently.

That is, stripped back, the whole lesson.

James Garry is assistant director at The Cockburn Association

This is an edited version of article that appeared yesterday, here, on the Association’s website, for which grateful thanks.

Image details: Old Fishmarket Close (a Richard Murphy design, here); copyright Mike Wilson

Important notice: Now that we have reached the first anniversary of the site, you can show your support by pledging either a monthly sum of £3.50 or an an annual one of £30 - to help pay for some solid journalism (including the commissioning of freelancers).

Paying subscribers will be eligible for exclusive content and also access to webinars and online discussions as to what content to pursue.

If you are not yet a free subscriber, go to BuildEdinburgh.Substack.com and choose the paying subscription option. Or click the button above and take it from there.

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Thanks, in anticipation, Build Edinburgh

In today’s edition:

• Planning permission granted for Rose Street Theatre conversion;

• Edinburgh named ‘most walkable’ city in Europe;

• Gillis Centre reportedly to be put up for sale;

• Concern raised about Pleasance Fringe venue planning application frequency;

• Election manifestos reportedly offer ‘support’ for Borders rail line extension;

• Plans lodged for name change signage at St James Quarter;

• Visitor attraction accolades for two Edinburgh sites;

• Architecture graduates - annual ‘degree show’;

• Seminar to consider how best to manage tourism in the city;

• Planners gather in Edinburgh, from across Europe;

• Application withdrawn to covert Leith office block into apartments;

• ‘Tenant Power’ electricity tariff set to save Muirhouse tenants around £200 a year;

• Permission being sought for ten-homes development in Canonmills;

• Tollcross clock to be restored and returned;

• Views sought on Holyrood Park; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Planning permission granted for Rose Street Theatre conversion

PLANNING permission has been granted, to turn Rose Street Theatre into a hotel - six months after being initially refused.

Wednesday’s Development Management sub-committee of the city council (here, agenda items 7.1 and 7.2) heard how revised plans for adapting the theatre had received the backing of the council’s chief planning officer.

Said a paper from the officer, here: “The proposal retains most of the sanctuary space as the principal internal space, with its scale, hierarchy and key spatial relationships remaining legible.

“The limited degree of subdivision that has been introduced has been carefully reduced and refined compared with the previously refused scheme [here, ref: 25/02951/FUL].

“The spatial quality of the sanctuary space is proposed to be retained through the careful incorporation of the existing vaulted ceiling and decorative plasterwork into the proposed layout. Two of the three arched bays are contained within the preserved sanctuary space with the remaining arch exposed in a bedroom on each side.”

It means four fewer bedrooms than originally envisaged.

When the previous plans were rejected in November - following listed building concerns - there was a fear the empty building might have no realistic future.

Watch Wednesday’s debate, here, on the city council’s webcast.

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Edinburgh named ‘most walkable’ city in Europe

EDINBURGH has been named the ‘most walkable’ city in Europe.

The title follows an annual survey (here) by media brand, Time Out, which found 93 per cent of local people in Edinburgh rating the city as either ‘good’ or ‘amazing’ for walking.

The top ten list reads, as follows:

• Edinburgh, UK (93 per cent);

• Copenhagen, Denmark (90 per cent);

• Oslo, Norway (89 per cent);

• Stockholm, Sweden (88 percent);

• Paris, France (88 per cent);

• Helsinki, Finland (85 per cent);

• Kraków, Poland (83 per cent)';

• Riga, Latvia (83 per cent);

• Vienna, Austria (83 per cent); and

• Amsterdam, Netherlands (81 per cent).

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Gillis Centre reportedly to be put up for sale

THE former St Margaret’s convent and school in Marchmont - now known as the Gillis Centre - is reportedly going to be put up for sale, later this year.

Now operating as an administrative base for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St Andrews & Edinburgh, the Centre is a mix of category A- and B-listed individual buildings.

Read more, here, in The Herald newspaper.

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Concern raised about Pleasance Fringe venue planning application frequency

THE community council that takes in the busy Edinburgh Fringe Festival complex, the Pleasance, has raised a concern about a planning application (here, ref: 26/01170/FUL) seeking permission to create temporary facilities, such as performance spaces, essentially for the next three years.

Says the Southside Community Council, here, a system of annual planning applications would provide more on-going dialogue with local people than a three-yearly one.

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Election manifestos reportedly offer ‘support’ for Borders rail line extension

SUPPORT for extending the Borders rail line, currently between Edinburgh and Tweedbank, has reportedly been offered, in various guises, by four political parties ahead of next week’s Scottish Parliament elections.

Reports the website, Deadline News, here, the manifestos of the SNP, Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens have each positively raised the subject of the line being possibly extended to Hawick and beyond.

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Plans lodged for name change signage at St James Quarter

PLANS have been lodged to instal new signage at the St James Quarter, to reflect a change in its name - as noted on BuildEdinburgh, here, from last October.

A planning application - here, ref: 26/01562/ADV - has been submitted to install ‘Westfield - St James Quarter’, with the design by AMA Studio.

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Visitor attraction accolades for two Edinburgh sites

THE Royal Yacht Britannia, in Leith, has been named the world top visitor attraction - in a list based on ratings by users of the travel guidance platform, Tripadvisor.

And it doesn’t end there for Edinburgh, with the list (here) also featuring The Real Mary King’s Close, on the High Street, in sixth place.

The Basílica de la Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona, came second, while Gardens by the Bay, in Singapore, finished third.

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

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Architecture graduates - annual ‘degree show’

THE annual exhibition / degree show of architectural students at the Edinburgh College of Art is taking place from the 29th of this month.

The show - which ends on June 5 - is being held as part of the college’s wider degree exhibitions, at its Lauriston Place base.

Tickets can be found here, on eventbrite.

Read more about it in The Herald newspaper, here.

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Seminar to consider how best to manage tourism in the city

A SEMINAR on how best to manage tourism in Edinburgh is being hosted at the City Chambers by the heritage body, The Cockburn Association, a week on Tuesday.

It is part of a Festival of Europe, Scotland series of events taking place this month.

Says the publicity blurb: “Hospitality is a core part of Scotland’s culture, but the pressures to meet the demands of high visitor footfall are putting pressures on our capital city. Our session will explore new research into the impact of tourism in Edinburgh and discuss European approaches to managing tourist tensions and balancing the needs of residents and visitors.”

Ticket details, here.

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Planners gather in Edinburgh, from across Europe

BEGINS a story on the website of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI): “Senior planning professionals from across Europe gathered in Edinburgh to discuss how cities, regions and nations can respond to the climate emergency, deliver clean energy and build more resilient communities.”

It was a meeting of the General Assembly of the European Council of Spatial Planners – Conseil Européen des Urbanistes, held at weekend at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

As reported, here and here, on the RTPI and the Project Scotland websites.

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Application withdrawn to covert Leith office block into apartments

AN application to convert an office block in Leith into short-term accommodation has been withdrawn (here).

As noted here, on BuildEdinburgh, there was widespread concern about how the loss of office workers from the block (Waterside House) might impact on the area.

The application was for 15 short-term let apartments (here, ref: 26/00362/FULSTL).

There were almost 300 objections (and no comments in support) on the city council’s planning applications portal (here).

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‘Tenant Power’ electricity tariff set to save Muirhouse tenants around £200 a year

TENANTS of Muirhouse Housing Association can expect to save around £200 a year, following the installation of solar panels (and associated battery storage) and the creation of a new payment tariff, called ‘Tenant Power’.

More than 30 ‘social’ homes are involved in a partnership agreed with energy supplier, Octopus, as it describes here.

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

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Permission being sought for ten-homes development in Canonmills

PLANNING permission is being sought to replace a former nursery - on Heriot Hill Terrace, Canonmills - with ten homes.

The application - here, ref: 26/01422/FUL - has been submitted on behalf of Stockton-on-Tees-based Mandale Homes.

But local newsletter, the Broughton Spurtle, reports, here, that “some locals have reacted with alarm” to the plans.

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Tollcross clock to be restored and returned

THE clock that used to grace the intersection of roads at Tollcross is to be restored and returned, four years after it had been removed due to safety concerns.

As noted last week, on BuildEdinburgh (here), the city council’s Finance committee (which met on Tuesday) was being asked - here, agenda item 7.6 - to approve a cost estimate of £72,572, excluding VAT.

The city council itself reports the story, here.

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Views sought on Holyrood Park

VIEWS are being sought as to how legislation might be updated, as it applies to Holyrood Park.

Begins an online survey, here - posted by the Friends of Holyrood Park - the aim is to “update the legislation covering Holyrood Park: to support the aims set out in Historic Environment Scotland’s Strategic Plan, including improvements to the natural environment, access and safe enjoyment of activities”.

But you need to be quick: the survey ends on Sunday.

Image details: The Meadows, towards Bruntsfield; copyright Mike Wilson

THERE are moments in the life of a city when the quieter decisions matter most.

The recent designation of the former Lads’ Institute - at 27–29 Ratcliffe Terrace - as a category C-listed building [as noted here, on BuildEdinburgh] is one such moment.

It may not command the skyline like Edinburgh’s great set pieces, nor draw the crowds of our better-known landmarks, but its value lies elsewhere, in the everyday fabric of the city, and in the lives it once served.

Built between 1906 and 1907, the Institute is a remarkably intact example of an Arts and Crafts building designed with purpose.

Its restrained detailing and careful proportions speak to a period in which architecture was expected not only to endure, but to contribute meaningfully to civic life.

This was not simply a building, it was an idea made solid: a place of education, recreation, and moral improvement for young men at the turn of the 20th century.

Such institutions once formed part of a wider network of social provision across the city, reflecting a belief that the built environment could shape opportunity and aspiration.

Today, few survive in anything like their original form. That this building does is significant.

Historic Environment Scotland’s decision to designate the former Lads’ Institute is important not just because of the building’s external appearance, but because of what survives inside it.

The designation recognises that the interior layout, fixtures, rooms and circulation spaces all help to tell the story of how the building was used, who it served, and why it mattered to its community.

In this case, the interior is not incidental decoration. It is central evidence of the building’s social, educational and communal role.

Historic buildings are often valued for their façades, but their interiors can carry equal, and sometimes greater, significance. Interiors reveal patterns of everyday life, collective activity and social purpose that may not be visible from the street.

Protecting only the exterior risks losing precisely the elements that explain why a place mattered in the first place.

What is equally striking is the strength of public feeling behind its recognition.

The consultation process (here) revealed overwhelming support for listing, with 98 per cent of respondents in favour.

In a city where debates about change can often be polarised, this level of consensus is notable.

It suggests a shared understanding that heritage is not only about grand monuments, but about the places that tell quieter, more local stories.

The timing of this designation is particularly welcome.

In 2025, the then-unlisted building faced a planning application (here, ref: 25/02904/FUL) for its demolition and replacement with purpose-built student accommodation for 66 beds.

That application was refused by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee last October [as noted by BuildEdinburgh, here], with subsequent attempts to pursue demolition separately also unsuccessful.

Strong local representations, alongside input from community councils and heritage organisations, helped highlight the building’s architectural and social value.

In that sense, the listing reflects not only appreciation, but a timely recognition of significance that might otherwise have been lost.

For community stakeholders involved in development or reuse proposals, this designation highlights the importance of having a full understanding of heritage value, not just what is visible externally.

Decisions made on partial information can unintentionally damage or erase nationally- and locally-important assets.

A comprehensive understanding of both exterior and interior significance allows communities to engage more confidently and constructively in planning processes, challenge assumptions that interiors are easily replaceable, and argue for reuse approaches that respect cultural meaning as well as architectural form.

Crucially, recognising interior significance helps reframe heritage as a living community resource, not simply a decorative shell.

It strengthens the case for thoughtful adaptation that retains identity, memory and social value alongside physical fabric.

In doing so, it supports better outcomes for heritage, communities and future use alike.

For [heritage body] The Cockburn Association, this outcome reflects a principle we have long sought to uphold in the face of continuing development pressures: that Edinburgh’s character depends as much on its modest, well-loved buildings as on its internationally recognised icons.

The Lads’ Institute is part of a broader townscape, one that gives texture and continuity to the Southside, and which risks being incrementally eroded if not properly recognised.

Listing does not freeze a building in time, nor should it. Instead, it provides a framework within which change can be managed thoughtfully.

It acknowledges significance while allowing for adaptation, an approach that is essential if historic buildings are to remain part of a living city.

There is also something worth noting about how this decision was reached: the consultation process allowed local voices to be heard, and they were heard clearly.

In an era when engagement can sometimes feel procedural rather than meaningful, this is a reminder that participation still matters, and can shape outcomes.

The recognition of buildings such as this one is rarely accidental; it is often the result of sustained civic awareness, careful scrutiny, and the willingness of individuals and organisations to speak up for places that might otherwise be overlooked.

Edinburgh is often celebrated for its dramatic vistas and historic grandeur. But its true richness lies in the layering of stories, some prominent, others easily overlooked. The former Lads’ Institute is one of those quieter stories, now given the protection and attention it deserves.

And that is something worth marking.

James Garry is assistant director at The Cockburn Association.

A version of this article appeared on the Associations’s website, here - for which grateful thanks.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• Dundas Street hotel, etc plans submitted;

• Re-submitted: Henderson Row office-to-residential plans;

• ‘Tram Trains’ feasibility study promised in SNP manifesto;

• Examined: ‘green’ data centres;

• Architect, Ian Begg, remembered;

• Views sought on proposed streets improvements in Craigmillar and Niddrie;

• Views sought on Craigmount High School expansion plans;

• Tollcross clock to be soon restored and returned?;

• Wanted: views on community grant allocation;

• Beach clean and litter picks: Wardie Bay, Calton Hill and Drumbrae Park;

• Primary school refurbishment completed, with at least one new school being pursued;

• Drylaw shopping centre: improvements reportedly starting next month;

• Victoria and other schools, Newhaven;

• Demolition reportedly agreed for several buildings at Western General Hospital;

• Average house price, Scotland; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

Dundas Street hotel, etc plans submitted

PLANS have been lodged for a hotel, restaurant and bar at the bottom of Dundas Street, on its west side - just up from Clark’s Bar.

It follows the submission of a Proposal of Application Notice, which involved two in-person consultation events - in January and February.

The PAN (here, ref: 25/06640/PAN) was seeking the demolition of both Centrum House and neighbouring Bupa House.

Says the current planning application (here, ref: 26/01504/FUL) - which is on behalf of Dakota Hotels - the design seeks to echo the massing of neighbouring properties, ie to create a coherent streetscape.

According to the architects, Morgan Architects, here: “The proposed building height is approximately 580mm higher than the existing buildings on the site, while remaining lower than the Georgian corner building opposite Fettes Row.

“This ensures that the development maintains the characteristic stepping of rooflines as the streets rise toward the core of the New Town. The massing has been carefully arranged to respond to the surrounding context, with volumes that sit comfortably alongside the neighbouring Georgian, Victorian and contemporary buildings.”

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

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Re-submitted: Henderson Row office-to-residential plans

PLANS to convert an office block on Henderson Row into 63 build-to-rent apartments have been re-submitted, following a rejection last year by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee (here - agenda item 4.5).

The application this time around (here, ref: 26/01640/FUL) is to remove the upper level - called a ‘mansard roof’ - and add a further two, including a ‘mansard’.

The architects are CDA.

The building was first a trams power station and depot for Edinburgh Northern Tram Company - as described here. They are currently owned by pensions, investment and life assurance group, Royal London.

Key among the proposed changes is an increase in the size of one-bedroom apartments and improved cycle storage - with the result that the now proposed scheme is two apartments shy of the original.

Says a design statement, here: “The double-height mansard roof has been omitted and, in its place, it is proposed to continue the existing stone and render up one additional storey (third floor) and to reinstate a new, single-storey mansard to fourth floor.

“This will allow the building to be read as a four-storey building with a roof – much like the surrounding tenements – rather than reading as a three-storey building with a top-heavy, two-storey roof.

“The new storey will be predominantly clad in stone and will, therefore, be in-keeping with the character of the existing building and wider conservation area.”

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

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‘Tram Trains’ feasibility study promised in SNP manifesto

A FEASIBILITY study into proposals to re-open the South Suburban rail line to passenger traffic and have it connected to the city’s tram network - using ‘Tram Trains’ - has been promised by the SNP in its manifesto for the upcoming Scottish Parliament elections.

Says its manifesto - here, page 64 - the SNP declares: “Tram Trains have been established in a variety of European cities, and most recently in Cardiff. We will commission a full feasibility study for the use of Tram Trains on the South Suburban line in Edinburgh and support the next stages of the feasability [sic] work of the Clyde Metro proposals, to determine if they are an efficient investment of public money to improve the public transport offering in our two biggest cities and help foster economic growth.”

Read more about Tram Trains, here, on BuildEdinburgh.

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

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Examined: ‘green’ data centres

THE pros and cons of building so-called ‘green’ data centres is examined in a ‘long read’ published by the Edinburgh Inquirer website.

Penned - here - by award-winning young engineer, Corey Boyle.

Arguments for building them in Scotland partly centre on an over-supply of renewable energy, to the extent that tens of millions of pounds are having to be paid to have wind turbines switched off.

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Architect, Ian Begg, remembered

A TRIBUTE to the Scots architect who designed the Radisson Blu hotel on the High Street is taking place next month.

Ian Begg, who died nine years ago, is also known for his restoration of several Scots castles.

It is taking place at the Radisson Blu, on May 18; details here.

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Views sought on proposed streets improvements in Craigmillar and Niddrie

VIEWS are being sought on proposed improvements to several streets in Craigmillar and Niddrie.

The streets include Peffermill Road from Prestonfield Avenue to the junction with Duddingston Road West, Cairntows Park, and Niddrie Mains Road west from Duddingston Road West to Greendykes Road.

Two drop-in events have been scheduled for next month, along with an online poll open until July 8.

Read more, here.

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Views sought on Craigmount High School expansion plans

VIEWS are being sought on plans - noted here, on BuildEdinburgh - to expand Craigmount High School, just east of Maybury Road.

An online poll has been published - along with draft drawings - by the city council, here, which closes on June 10.

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Tollcross clock to be soon restored and returned?

HOPES are high that the historic clock that, until four years ago, occupied a site at the intersection of roads at Tollcross will be soon restored and returned.

On Tuesday, the city council’s Finance committee is being asked - here, agenda item 7.6 - to approve a cost estimate of £72,572, excluding VAT.

Say papers, here, being presented to councillors: “The Tollcross clock was built by James Ritchie and Sons in 1901. Its historic importance is recognised as it is a C-listed structure.”

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

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Wanted: views on community grant allocation

VIEWS are being sought as to how a community grants scheme might be differently operated.

Says the city council, which operates the scheme: “The Community Grants Fund is a small grants scheme provided by the council. Each year, community groups and other local charities can apply for up to £5,000 to develop and deliver activity in their local area that will benefit or add value to their community.

”Currently, a funding panel in each area decides which projects get funded each year.

“They base their decisions on what they feel is needed most in their community. Funding panel members include ward councillors, community councillors and representatives from local community organisations.”

Read more, here. And complete an online survey.

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Deaths among homeless people

BEGINS ‘local democracy reporter’ (his post paid for by the BBC), Joe Sullivan: “Some 56 homeless people in Edinburgh reportedly died in 2025, according to council data released under Freedom of Information legislation.

“People in temporary accommodation made up 37 of the deaths, while those out of temporary accommodation made up 19.

“The causes of the 56 total deaths were not reported in the response, but it is understood that at least some were due to natural causes.”

Read more, here, on the website of broadcasters, STV.

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Beach clean and litter picks: Wardie Bay, Calton Hill and Drumbrae Park

A BEACH clean is taking place at Wardie Bay, on Sunday.

It is being organised by the ‘secular congregation’, Sunday Assembly Edinburgh, and begins at 10am.

More details, here, on eventbrite.

And a litter pick is taking place tomorrow, on Calton Hill. From 10am.

Plus, there is a litter pick at Drumbrae Park - on Sunday, from 11am.

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Primary school refurbishment completed, with at least one new school being pursued

WHAT is being described as “significant refurbishment and retrofit work” at Brunstane Primary School has been completed - according to the city council.

Says the council, here: “The improvement works adopted a ‘fabric first’ approach – a sustainable building design strategy that maximises the performance of materials and components aiming to reduce energy demand and carbon impact.

“Following the works, the school building has achieved the highest EPC rating of A, acknowledging the energy efficiency of the building.”

Meanwhile, planning permission is being sought for at least one new primary school in the city.

A planning application (here, ref: 26/01502/PAN) has been lodged for the demolition of the existing Fox Covert Primary School, in Clerwood, and then a brand-new replacement.

A PAN (Proposal of Application Notice) requires some form of public consultation before the submission of a more formal planning application. And two events have been organised - both taking place at the current school: Thursday, 2pm-6pm and Thursday May 28 (same times).

Meanwhile, a second new primary school may be soon in the offing - for Gracemount (ref: 26/01498/SCR) - but no details are currently showing on the city’s planning applications portal.

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Drylaw shopping centre: improvements reportedly starting next month

IMPROVEMENTS to Drylaw shopping centre - straddling Ferry Road and Easter Drylaw Place - are reportedly to begin next month.

Says North Edinburgh News website, here: “Works are scheduled to begin on Tuesday 5 May and complete on Wednesday 24 June (these dates may require to change).”

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Victoria and other schools, Newhaven

A SERIES of articles about Edinburgh’s schools from yesteryear continues with a look at Victoria and other schools, in Newhaven.

Local history expert, Andy Arthur, writes about it, here, on his website, Threadinburgh.

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Demolition reportedly agreed for several buildings at Western General Hospital

A ‘BUSINESS case’ to demolish several buildings at the Western General Hospital has reportedly been approved by NHS Lothian’s board.

Say several media outlets - including here and here - the buildings identified are either derelict or no longer fit for purpose.

Writes local democracy reporter (his post paid for by the BBC), Joe Sullivan, on the website of broadcasters, STV (here): “At Wednesday’s board meeting, members voted to pursue the less expensive of two demolition options that had been proposed, with a cost estimate of £23.2m.

“On security, the report stated there had been instances of ‘trespassing, vandalism and theft’ in a number of the buildings concerned, with 46 incidents recorded since January 2024.”

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Average house price, Scotland

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

Says RoS, here, that’s 2.3 per cent up on the same time last year but 0.6 per cent down on the previous month, January.

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Image details: Dean Village; copyright Mike Wilson

I GREW up in Edinburgh and would often travel by bus to The Royal Scottish Museum in Chambers Street where I would spend the afternoon wandering about looking at the displays that encompassed science and technology, natural history, and world cultures.

There were stuffed animals from all over the world, scientific equipment, steam locomotives, engines (some neatly cut in half to show how they worked), and human-made objects and artefacts of all kinds.

It was quite simply the most exciting place I had ever seen.

By the end of primary school, I had decided that the natural sciences were what I found most interesting and here was an extraordinary treasure house, right on my doorstep.

I was sure that this was somewhere I could learn everything that was worth knowing about.

In modern vernacular, I had found my happy place.

I often entertained the idea that, one day, I might hide somewhere when the closing bell was rung in order to get myself locked in for the night.

I would be prepared with sufficient food and a torch and didn’t even consider what would actually happen if I ever made my daydream a reality.

The inevitable search party, police involvement not to mention anxious, then increasingly irate, parents.

Fantasies of what might happen in museums after dark have since been the subject of very successful books and films, and organised sleepovers are de rigueur. I really missed out.

The building was designed by Francis Fowke, the Irish engineer and architect.

It started life in 1861 and was partially opened in 1866.

It has a Renaissance-style façade with a glazed roof supported by cast iron pillars and arches that rise the full height of the building.

Before the building underwent a major refurbishment, reopening in 2011, you would ascend the wide steps from Chambers Street to the massive double doors and into the light-filled space of the grand central hall, as if climbing to receive wisdom from the high altar of learning.

Nowadays, street level access takes you through what were once storage cellars - a little less grand.

At the western end of the building was a huge Canadian red cedar totem pole, its painted animals staring out over the great glass-covered hall where there were two large shallow tiled fish ponds into which visitors would toss coins for good luck.

The ponds have gone and the totem pole, which had been carved in 1885, was rightly returned to the Nisga’a people of British Columbia, three years ago, having been taken from them around 1930.

Another of the displays I remember from my childhood visits to the Royal Scottish Museum was the mesmerising Foucault Pendulum suspended from a very long wire fixed to the roof.

The pendulum was invented in 1851 by French physicist, Léon Foucault, to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth and, although Edinburgh has lost this little bit of scientific wonder, Foucault pendulums are still swinging elsewhere in the UK.

Francis Fowke, who was also involved in the design of the Royal Albert Hall, died suddenly of an aneurysm at the age of 42, not long after the Chambers Street museum was fully opened.

Before he died, he had won a competition for the design of the Natural History Museum in London, which was later remodelled and completed by Alfred Waterhouse and it was here that I studied for my Doctorate.

Later, I was employed in the Entomological Collections of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where, as an academic, I worked for a quarter of a century before leaving to go into broadcasting.

This handsome Neo-Gothic building was designed by another Irish engineer and architect, Benjamin Woodward, who like Fowke, died at the height of his career.

Tuberculosis took him at the age of 45, only one year after the museum opened in 1860.

I consider myself very fortunate indeed to have had two dream jobs in my life and my early visits to Chambers Street Museum were the initial inspiration for the development of both.

George McGavin is an entomologist, author, academic, television presenter and explorer. His TV programmes include Oak Tree: Nature's Greatest Survivor, After Life: The Strange Science of Decay and The Lost Land of The Volcano.

Image details: copyright Mike Wilson; text copyright: George McGavin

ANY more than three or four people and it would be pretty unbearable.

But a lounge (or living room) of circa 4m by 3.2m can pretty much suffice for a single person and two or three guests.

Especially if the room is dual aspect, with a focal point, which could be a TV but could just as easily be an inglenook fireplace that’s around 170cm wide.

You can get two, 140cm-long sofas in a 4m x 3.2m space.

And should there be a fireplace at around 170cm wide, that provides more than enough space for 100cm-plus cupboards / shelves on either side.

Perfect for placing a TV on.

Images: copyright Mike Wilson

STREET lighting these days is not just about design - although these images are all about design - but about the potential impact on wildlife, not least moths (as noted, here, by the charity, Butterfly Conservation).

Some local authorities in the UK are experimenting with dimming - and even switching off - their street lights, to both save money and to reduce light pollution.

Check out this: a ‘Street Lighting Toolkit’, from the Scottish Futures Trust.

Main image: Edinubrgh; copyright all images Mike Wilson

Three weeks ago, BuildEdinburgh carried an article on 'Woonerf’-style street design (here). Now, James Garry - from The Cockburn Association - offers his own take on designing streets…

A CONSULTATION (here) is now open on what is being described as the ‘North Edinburgh Connections’ project, previously known as NEAT.

Though framed as an ‘active travel’ scheme, it is more consequential than that label suggests.

It will reshape some of north Edinburgh’s most important streets and, with them, the everyday experience of the communities they serve.

The project centres on West Granton Road, Pennywell Road and Ferry Road.

These are key corridors linking established neighbourhoods with an area undergoing significant change, particularly around Granton, where ambitious regeneration plans have been underway for some years.

The proposals include reducing sections of Pennywell Road to one lane in each direction, introducing segregated cycle routes, widening pavements, improving crossings, upgrading bus stops, and adding trees and planting.

Taken together, this represents a substantial reallocation of space: less priority for general traffic, more for walking, wheeling and cycling, and a stated intention to improve the public realm along these routes.

The language of ‘active travel’ is useful shorthand, but it can obscure what is truly at stake.

Streets are not simply corridors for movement.

They are the most immediate and widely shared public spaces in any city.

For decades, many of Edinburgh’s arterial roads have been shaped around vehicle throughput, often at the expense of pedestrian comfort, safety and environmental quality.

North Edinburgh’s main roads are a clear example: wide carriageways, fast-moving traffic and fragmented crossings have created places that feel inhospitable, particularly for those on foot or using mobility aids.

Rebalancing that space is both necessary and overdue.

Safer conditions, cleaner air and more greenery are all outcomes worth pursuing. But the success of this project will depend not on intent alone, but on execution.

Edinburgh’s experience of street redesign over recent years offers some instructive lessons, and not all of them are encouraging.

Cycle routes interrupted at junctions, planting that feels incidental, materials that age poorly, layouts that do not reflect how people actually move through an area: these are not minor imperfections. They erode confidence in the process and limit the long-term value of the investment.

There is a risk that schemes of this kind become standardised exercises, applied uniformly rather than shaped by place.

North Edinburgh is not a blank canvas. It has its own character, formed by its communities, its landscape and its history.

From the post-war housing schemes of Muirhouse and Pennywell to the emerging waterfront at Granton, these corridors carry layers of social and built history that deserve thoughtful integration, not off-the-shelf templates.

If road space is to be reduced and reallocated, the resulting public realm must be of a quality that justifies and sustains that change.

The consultation refers throughout to walking, wheeling and cycling.

That framing matters, but only if it translates into streets that genuinely work for everyone.

Inclusive design must be a non-negotiable standard, not an aspiration.

This means older residents, people with limited mobility, families with prams, and those who rely on vehicles for essential journeys.

Improvements must support women’s safety design principles and encourage active travel, mitigating the nationwide decline.

It means crossings that are safe and convenient rather than merely compliant, surfaces that are consistently usable in all weathers, and routes that are coherent from end to end rather than broken up by compromises at difficult junctions.

It is also important to be candid about the adjustments these changes will bring.

Reducing traffic capacity will affect journey times, deliveries, servicing and parking for some residents and businesses. With financial and wellbeing impacts at stake, interventions need to be carefully thought through, and mitigations put in place to avoid any negative consequences.

At the same time, the current situation is not a neutral baseline.

It already favours vehicle movement over other uses of street space. The question is not whether change is warranted, but whether it is carried through with sufficient skill and care to produce a bespoke and positive community outcome, deserving of Scotland’s capital city.

This consultation offers the chance to ask a broader question about what the city is trying to achieve.

Is the aim to retrofit active travel infrastructure into existing streets?

Or is it to create places that are genuinely attractive, coherent, and built to last?

The distinction matters. Edinburgh’s reputation as a city of quality rests not only on its historic centre, but on the care given to all its neighbourhoods.

North Edinburgh deserves the same standard of attention to detail, innovation and civic spend.

The consultation is the moment when the detail begins to take shape: the positioning of crossings, the treatment of junctions, the continuity of routes, the choice of materials, the placement and species of planting.

These are the elements that will determine whether the scheme succeeds or falls short in practice.

Local knowledge is critical.

Residents and regular users understand how these streets function, where the difficulties lie and what would actually improve matters. Their input should shape not just whether change happens, but exactly how it is delivered.

North Edinburgh Connections has real potential.

It could deliver safer, greener and more usable streets, help reconnect communities and support the area’s continuing transformation.

But potential must be matched by quality of delivery, responsiveness to local experience, and a genuine commitment to treating streets as civic assets rather than engineering problems.

Edinburgh’s future as a liveable city depends on getting these everyday transformations right.

North Edinburgh deserves no less.

James Garry is assistant director at The Cockburn Association

This article first appeared on the website of The Cockburn Association, here, for which grateful thanks.

Image details: Granton; copyright Mike Wilson

In today’s edition:

• ‘Affordable’ housing tender issued for New Town Quarter site;

• Edinburgh ranked ninth-busiest tourist destination in the world;

• How much for an A4 sheet’s worth of ‘floor space’?;

• Plans lodged for padel and tennis centre;

• Appeal issued to help in the building of two ‘urban crofts’;

• Almost 900 new-build homes started in the city (708 completed) during the final three months of last year;

• Architect, Richard Murphy, to present ‘three ideas for the city centre’;

• First homes released for sale at Edmonstone Village;

• Appeal lodged to build South Gyle ‘green data centre’;

• ‘Lads’ Institute’ receives C-category listing;

• Upgrade plans lodged to upgrade four Moredun high-rises;

• Profiled: the young man behind Edinburgh ‘planning intelligence’ website;

• Plans lodged for ten-flats block in Portobello;

• The future of the Old Town: views sought;

• Construction of Granton townhouses to finally begin;

• Student accommodation development - on video;

• Leith student accommodation complex reportedly given final go-ahead;

• ESPC most-viewed property;

• ‘Mixed-use urban neighbourhood’ development plans lodged for Edinburgh BioQuarter;

• Birthday celebrations: World Heritage site;

• Trial launched of single-use cup recycling;

• The impact on first-time buyers of the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax;

• Seafield retail park purchased by Crown Estate Scotland; and

• Enjoy, see you next Friday!

‘Affordable’ housing tender issued for New Town Quarter site

A TENDER has been issued to build 108 ‘affordable’ homes on the site of former Royal Bank of Scotland offices on Fettes Row / just off Dundas Street.

The site - known as ‘New Town Quarter’ - is currently the subject of an appeal to the Scottish Government (here, PPA-230-2755), after it was rejected by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee, amid concerns about the proposed number of student beds.

Some 107 residential units are currently under construction by the developers, Ediston.

The ‘affordable’ housing element is part of Ediston’s overall submission for the site.

And says an entry on the tenders website, Public Contracts Scotland, here, by the Wheatley Housing Group: “This brief is to deliver the affordable housing component (consisting of 108 ‘mid-market rent’ homes delivered across a single block) of the wider mixed-use redevelopment of the former Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters, representing one of the city’s most significant brownfield regeneration opportunities.”

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

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Edinburgh ranked ninth-busiest tourist destination in the world

EDINBURGH has been ranked the ninth-busiest tourist destination in the world - in terms of the number of tourists versus the number of locals.

The city ranks behind Dubrovnik, Croatia; Reykjavík, Iceland; Venice, Italy; Geneva, Switzerland; Porto, Portugal; Phuket, Thailand; Florence, Italy; and Lisbon, Portugal.

It is just ahead of Athens, Greece.

Says the organisation behind the analysis - car rental booking and comparison website, DiscoverCars.com: “This city had 1,714 visitors for every 100 locals in 2025, as 8.4 million people came to visit compared to the 490,000 people who live there.”

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How much for an A4 sheet’s worth of ‘floor space’?

EDINBURGH has been named the most expensive part of Scotland to buy ‘floor space’, with £204 required to purchase just an A4-sheet’s worth.

The calculation - that also sees Argyll and Bute the least expense, at £74 per A4 sheet - has been issued by property website, Zoopla: here.

The story is picked up by Yahoo!News, here, and also The Herald newspaper, here.

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Plans lodged for padel and tennis centre

PLANS have been lodged, for a padel and tennis centre at Fort Kinnaird.

The application is a Proposal of Application Notice (here, ref: 26/00189/PAC on the Midlothian Council planning portal), meaning in-person consultation events before the submission of a formal planning application.

The first is taking place on Wednesday (between 4pm and 7.30pm) at Danderhall Community Hub, with the second scheduled for the 21st of next month (same times) at the Conference Room & Piano Bar, Queen Margaret University.

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

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Appeal issued to help in the building of two ‘urban crofts’

AN appeal has been launched for people to help in the building of two so-called ‘urban crofts’ - plots of usually disused plots of land in the city turned over to community food growing.

Say organisers, Earth in Common - which already operates an ‘urban croft’ at Leith Links, here - it is seeking to create ‘urban crofts’ in Corstorphine (here) and Trinity (here).

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Almost 900 new-build homes started in the city (708 completed) during the final three months of last year

ALMOST 900 new-build homes were started in Edinburgh - across the private, local authority and housing association sectors - during the months October-December last year, according to Scottish Government statistics.

Says the government, here, there were exactly 894 ‘all sector’ new-build starts in Edinburgh during the quarter year, compared to 521 (Q3 2025), 153 (Q2 2025), 815 (Q1 2025) and 965 (Q4 2024).

Across the same period, there were 708 ‘all sector’ new-build completions in the capital during Q4 2025, compared to 780 (Q3 2025), 1,134 (Q2 2025), 532 (Q1 2025) and 1,006 (Q4 2024).

Read more, here, on BuildEdinburgh (its statistics section).

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Architect, Richard Murphy, to present ‘three ideas for the city centre’

ARCHITECT, Richard Murphy - behind radical redesign plans for Princes Street (here) - is the guest speaker at the annual general meeting of the local heritage body, The Cockburn Association.

His presentation is titled, ‘The ideas which could transform the centre of Edinburgh’.

Ticket details, here.

Check out: ‘Princes Street, a reading history’ (here, on BuildEdinburgh).

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First homes released for sale at Edmonstone Village

THE first homes in a housing development off Old Dalkeith Road, near Danderhall, have been released for sale.

When it is completed, Edmonstone Village is expected to comprise 312 homes, costing £87m, and the first batch of them has been released for sale, by house builders, Avant.

A media release about the ‘release’ has been posted, here, on the Avant website.

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

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Appeal lodged to build South Gyle ‘green data centre’

AN appeal to build a ‘green data centre’ in South Gyle has been lodged with the Scottish Government.

It follows a rejection - in February, by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee (here, agenda item 6.1) - of a planning application (here, ref: 25/04239/PPP).

The appeal documentation can be found, here. It says: “The appeal is ready to be allocated to a [Scottish Government] ‘reporter’ and receipt of the planning authority response is due on 21 April 2026. The period for interested members of the public to make representation ends on 28 April 2026. Any representations received by the deadline will be passed to the planning authority and agent/appellant for their comments.”

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‘Lads’ Institute’ receives C-category listing

A DEGREE of protection - not least against plans to demolish it for student accommodation - has been provided for the ‘Lads’ Institute’ on Ratcliffe Terrace.

The C-category listing of the building - here, by Scottish Government agency, Historic Environment Scotland - follows a consultation exercise - here, which ended at the start of this month.

As reported, here, by BuildEdinburgh in October last year, a planning application for student accommodation on the site was rejected by the city council’s Development Management sub-committee.

But a demolition request has since been submitted - here, ref: 26/00495/CLP - which is, according to the council’s planning applications portal, ‘awaiting assessment’.

Read about the building’s history on the local history website, Threadinburgh, here.

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Upgrade plans lodged to upgrade four Moredun high-rises

PLANNING permission is being sought, to upgrade four high-rise blocks of flat in Moredun.

One application (here, ref: 26/00959/FUL) is for Moncrieffe House and Forteviot House, both on Moredunvale Bank, while another (here, ref: 26/00961/FUL) is for Castleview House and Marytree House, both on Craigour Green.

The architects are Anderson Nell + Christie.

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Profiled: the young man behind Edinburgh ‘planning intelligence’ website

THE 26 year-old young man behind a website - that seeks to make it easier to interrogate planning applications in the city - is the subject of a media profile.

Harry Williams is behind CityScope, which uses AI to deliver what he describes as ‘planning intelligence’.

He is a systems analyst at estate agents, Rettie.

Read more about him, here, on the website, Deadline News.

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Plans lodged for ten-flats block in Portobello

PLANNING permission is being sought to build a block of ten flats in Portobello.

The application - here, ref: 26/00654/FUL - concerns a storage yard on Station Brae.

The architects are hLp Architecture.

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

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The future of the Old Town: views sought

VIEWS are being sought about the future of the Old Town.

The district’s local Development Trust is seeking to submit a Local Place Plan to the city council, as it prepares its City Plan 2040.

And to that end, it is organising in-person events tomorrow, on May 4 and June 5.

Details here.

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Construction of Granton townhouses to finally begin

THE construction of 28 townhouses on the site of what is believed to be the oldest purpose-built car factory in the UK (as described here) is set to finally go ahead, following the payment of a ‘developer contribution’.

Planning permission - to turn the ‘B-listed’ (here) Madelvic House, in Granton, into the townhouses - was approved last year (as noted here, on the city’s planning applications portal, ref: 25/02543/LBC).

The townhouses are being developed by ‘affordable’ housing provider, Lar Housing Trust, and the architects are Hypostyle Architects.

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

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Student accommodation development - on video

A VIDEO of a student accommodation development in Edinburgh has been posted by the building’s contractor.

‘Pepper Mill’ is a 155-bed complex on Dunedin Street.

And contractors, Clark Contracts, has posted a video of its work, here.

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Leith student accommodation complex reportedly given final go-ahead

THE conversion of a bingo hall in Leith - into a 200-bed student accommodation complex - has reportedly got the final go-ahead, following the payment of ‘developer contributions’.

The hall is on Manderston Street and the final approval was granted on the second of this month, here, ref: 24/01162/FUL.

The architects are Oberlanders.

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

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ESPC most-viewed property

IT’S a double-upper flat in Gullane, East Lothian, that has been the most viewed property - throughout last month - on the website of the Edinburgh Solicitors’ Property Centre, here.

In second place, in a top ten list, is a home in Roslin, Midlothian.

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‘Mixed-use urban neighbourhood’ development plans lodged for Edinburgh BioQuarter

PLANS have been lodged for a ‘mixed-use urban neighbourhood’ development - comprising laboratory facilities but also housing - at the Edinburgh BioQuarter, in Little France.

The application is a Proposal of Application Notice (here, ref: 26/01477/PAN), meaning in-person consultation events before the submission of a formal planning application.

The application has been submitted by Scottish Enterprise.

Two in-person consultation events have been scheduled: Nine, Edinburgh BioQuarter, Plot 9, Little France Road (Thursday April 30, 12pm-6pm) and Goodtrees Neighbourhood Centre, 5 Moredunvale Place (Tuesday June 9, 2pm-7pm).

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Birthday celebrations: World Heritage site

TO help celebrate the 30th birthday of Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns being designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site, the convener of the city council’s planning committee has penned a tribute.

Read Cllr Joan Griffiths’s article, here.

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Trial launched of single-use cup recycling

A TRIAL has been launched, to increase the number of single-use cups are recycled.

Says a media release issued by the charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful, here: “Dedicated cup bins will be deployed on Market Street, Waverley Bridge and outside Haymarket Station to collect single-use cups in a new trial to test the effectiveness of on-street cup recycling and see if it is possible to boost the number of cups being recycled in Scotland – currently four per cent - and prevent them from ending up as litter or in landfill.

“Furthermore, the partners have teamed up with retailers including Costa Coffee, Caffe Nero, Greggs and McDonald’s to launch Take It Back in Edinburgh.”

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The impact on first-time buyers of the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax

THE challenges facing first-time house buyers is examined by David Forsyth, of the Edinburgh Inquirer website, who looks, in particular, at the impact of Land and Buildings Transaction Tax on the final price of a property.

Here.

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Seafield retail park purchased by Crown Estate Scotland

THE body that manages a range of properties, earning income for the Scottish Government, has purchased a retail park at Seafield.

Crown Estate Scotland has acquired the park - which includes units let to, among others, Halfords, Connection Flooring and McGuirks Golf - for £5,724,500.

It is understood the purchase is to help diversify the Crown Estate Scotland portfolio, which has traditionally been weighted towards rural properties.

The story is picked up by BE News.

Image details: Albion Terrace; copyright Mike Wilson

A FRIEND’S scepticism got me thinking.

Without sharing exactly the expletives attached to his email, he did have a point when suggesting my article (here) about ‘Woonerfs’ (described here on Wikipedia) in Amsterdam amounted to a re-heating of an old story.

For those of you who have still to read the article, in summary it was about narrow streets hugged b…

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ALMOST 900 new-build homes were started in Edinburgh - across the private, local authority and housing association sectors - during the months October-December last year, according to Scottish Government statistics.

Says the government, here, there were exactly 894 ‘all sector’ new-build starts in Edinburgh during the quarter year, compared to 521 (Q3 20…

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