Hi all,
following on from the Ped on Princes Street video, my girlfriend and I were going to start lobbying for various public realm improvements in the middle of town, possibly using the council's petition site. We started thinking about improvements that we wanted and specific recommendations that we'd make when we stumbled upon the Gehl report, which pretty much sums up everything that we'd want. It is a superb vision of what Edinburgh should be. And somewhat surprisingly, the council, locals and businesses all seemed to agree that it was a good idea. Four years later we turn up in Edinburgh and it doesn't look much like the pictures in Jan Gehl's report, there aren't any people rollerskating down a pedestrianised Princes street for example...
If we're to campaign on this, we'd like to understand the history, how much of the report has been implemented, and whether any aspects were ever rejected or whether they're just on ice.
As far as we can see, the story goes:
2010: Gehl Architects publish their report "Edinburgh Revisited: Public Space, Public Life", which was commissioned by the council. I found this on the internet once but can't find it at the moment.
Feb 2011: Council review the report, accept it in general and propose acting on certain elements of it.
2013: Edinburgh city council consult on scheme Building a Vision for Edinburgh City Centre.
2011-2014 some positive things get done (such as installing a flower seller on Castle street who is obliged to be there until late, making the area less dodgy at night. Also making some city centre shops open later, and improvements to George street). Some simple things, such as removing barriers to people crossing the road, do not.
So basically what I want to know is
1) Do the council still, in principle, agree with all of Gehl's recommendations? Is it just a case of things getting done slowly, or has anything been rejected? Is pushing westbound buses down George street still on the cards for example?
2) Is there a reason that things are going slowly, besides the fact that things involving council's usually do, and lots of people need to be consulted.
Does anyone know the history here? Would be great to know exactly how we need to campaign in order to get Edinburgh looking a bit more like those nice pictures in the report.
posts
