‘Now that the traffic engineers have had their say it’s clearly about time that the public, not the notionally public servants, have a say about this space. I still hold to the view that sculpture – and new work in particular , the 4th plinth idea – would work here.’
cities
Hyperlocal: reinventing cities
Has September 2020 snuffed out the last flicker of a struggling economy? Or are we seeing the first signs of hyperlocal revival? Fay Young looks and thinks local
Airbnb blitz is blighting cities
‘Nor is it all bad, by any means. Just as there were ‘good banks’ and ‘bad banks’ after the 2008 economic crash, so there is a ‘good’ Airbnb and a ‘bad’ Airbnb.’ But the bad outweighs the good, says the author
Winners and losers on #MoultriesHill Part 3
Updated: Having won a battle that they should have lost (over the hotel), the bosses of Edinburgh St James are now engaged in one they should lose…but eventiually reached a settlement instead.
New Brutalism in St James Square: #MoultriesHill Part 2
Enough was enough. The cost and the disruption were too much. It made more sense to build the new Scottish Office elsewhere and leave the old gaunt, grey building to the pigeons.
The tangled history of Edinburgh St James
‘So St. James Square remained the province of a handful of small businesses and workshops and 3,700 or so of Edinburgh’s lower orders and their exploitative, ever-neglectful landlords. The long decline of James Craig’s tenement buildings continued. Rack followed ruin and ruin begat rack.’
Expiring Capital – on leaving Edinburgh
‘I continue to believe that the working class people that I was privileged to know in Edinburgh, who first made me feel at home here, deserved the keys to the city because they cared for it, worked it. It no longer has a place for them and as a result I cannot locate a place for myself in this city.’