BuildEdinburgh

BuildEdinburgh

Princes Street

Edinburgh's Princes Street is a fundamentally depressing experience; here's what we need to do to fix it

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Editor
Jan 08, 2026
∙ Paid

IN the words of [singer-songwriter] Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

With hind­sight, we took Princes Street for gran­ted. Vis­it­ors to Edin­burgh mar­velled at one of the world’s great boulevards, but, to us loc­als, it was just where you went to buy socks.

Then the cracks star­ted to develop.

As retail went online, bricks …

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