Hard work will make best use of industrial land

Published on Thursday 7 August 2008 10:49

PRESERVING Edinburgh's heritage as an industrial city seems to be a controversial topic at present, as can be seen by the debate over the retention of the Granton Gasometer frame.

While it is vital to keep our industrial heritage, it should not obscure the deeper issue, which is how to retain existing workplaces and perhaps more importantly, how we change and grow them.

With this in mind I was surprised to read the recent article on the response of Leith Central Community Council to the city council's recently produced planning briefs for the Steads Place/Jane Street area. My architectural practice has recently been involved in trying to examine ways of addressing this issue. In fact, the basic idea of a new street connecting Great Junction Street with Pilrig Street came from a study that we carried out into this area, which we genuinely felt had suggested a positive and creative solution to what is a very difficult problem.

The central issue is that Edinburgh has among the lowest stock of industrial land of UK cities so industry has gradually relocated out of the city. Many types of industry aren't particularly suited to creating good city centre environments, but we were looking at how "artisan industries" would be successfully incorporated. The aims were not just about workplace but creating mixed communities, the ability to walk to services and somewhere to have the fridge fixed.

The main idea behind the Jane Street proposal was creating a street that would link Great Junction Street with Pilrig Park. As we all know, this area of Leith is extremely short of good green space, particularly of a type which Pilrig Park would offer. This is hugely important to both maintaining and encouraging families to live in the area.

Successful solutions will only be found by a lot of hard work and engagement between owners, planners and local communities, but we must not lose sight of the fact that all these words and all these meetings need to be aimed at creating something which is substantially better than what exists at the moment.

Alistair Scott is a director of Smith Scott Mullan Associates