Helen Martin: Our city can't be a museum piece

Published on Monday 17 November 2008 09:17

ABOUT 50 years ago, as a little Glaswegian girl, I would often be brought through by train to visit the Edinburgh side of the family. The usual walking route from Waverley was up the Bridges, looking across to the Castle, back at Princes Street, down on the rail tracks and gardens and strolling past the old Scotsman building and on to the museum.

Then we'd turn left at Drummond Street and arrive at Roxburgh Terrace, No. 5 to be precise. Another route involved cutting through the Cowgate and climbing a mountain of steps.

The tenement block has been demolished now and replaced with student flats but the view from the window then, as now, was across to Heriot-Watt University and beyond, to the Time Ball on Calton Hill which dropped in summer time coinciding with the One o'Clock Gun.

If I had never set foot in Edinburgh since, I could make the same journey today and see the same views, albeit that the shops on the Bridges have drifted sadly downmarket.

As with most of the city centre, very little has fundamentally changed. So I was baffled by a warning from Unesco that change and modern development could threaten the city's World Heritage Site status.

Very few cities in the UK are as consistent as Edinburgh. By comparison, it is a mere 20 years since I lived in Glasgow, but in that time the view of the city from the M8 would be almost unrecognisable if it wasn't for the Clyde running through the middle of it.

Among the upcoming Capital developments which, it was claimed, could pose a problem to World Heritage status was a new skyscraper hotel at Haymarket and the regeneration of Leith Docks, neither of which in my book could be said to be at the heart of the city or have any effect on the integrity of the Old and New Towns, on which most of the heritage status is based.

Even less relevant is the long-awaited replacement of the St James Centre. It's a monstrous carbuncle today and architects would have to go some to make the new building any worse.

Unesco claims it is not suggesting that "cities should be maintained like museums" and thankfully it seems they are going to be true to their word with the suggestion that the city's status is unlikely to change despite some major developments in the centre, most notoriously the Caltongate project.

The city's economic developers and Chamber of Commerce were also concerned that World Heritage status could become an excuse for lethargy or inertia, encouraging us to hang on grimly to the old rather than trying to marry it with the new (I paraphrase, but that's the gist).

We are all proud of Edinburgh's history and unique architecture. But, despite impressions to the contrary, Edinburgh is not just a tourist destination.

It's all very well for York, for example, to remain preserved in aspic. It isn't a capital. It isn't a seat of government, finance and law. Clearly it has some commerce but it isn't a national wealth generator like Edinburgh or London. Note the lack of objection to London's skyscrapers. No, it is understood London must, despite its plethora of historical sites, move with the times and keep its cutting edge as an economic powerhouse.

Indeed, it is just as well that there was no such thing as World Heritage in the 1700s or the New Town, then a bold piece of modern architecture, would never have happened and Princes Street Gardens would still be the Nor' Loch.

Protecting the old shouldn't mean preventing the new. What will we lay down today that will become the Gardens or the New Town of the future? And, perhaps more to the point, how can we hope to afford the upkeep and high-class maintenance of our heritage if our economic development is hindered?

No-one is suggesting demolishing the Castle or running a motorway through the Gardens. But nor should we be forced to be the city equivalent of Miss Haversham, presiding over our wedding cake castle and palace while the cobwebs grow and prosperity declines.

The party's over

ONCE more it seems the banks are having huge problems coming to terms with what is, and is not, appropriate in the new order.

Christmas parties and internal award celebrations have been cancelled or toned down, but only after widespread condemnation.

Ten quid a head might seem modest to them for an annual piss-up. However, the comparison should not be with what they spent last year, but with what most companies outwith the finance industry can offer their staff . . . that is, nothing.

Nor have they come to terms with public ownership and stake-holding. So used are they to throwing around our money (previously, just that which we banked with them) that they fail to see the significant difference today in throwing around our money (that which we have loaned them to get them out of their incompetence abyss).

They are still inexplicably shameless about fiddling while we burn.

Take a hint, you silly bankers. Keep the heid down. Work your pinstripes off getting us all out of this hole. Forget parties, hand-outs or bonuses for just doing your job and, like everyone else, be grateful that – for the meantime – you're still in one.