Edinburgh's dismal Princes Street: No wonder Sir Walter Scott sits stony-faced – Aidan Smith

The most famous one-sided street in the world is in need of a makeover but planners must learn from the mistakes of the past

If you live in Scotland’s capital, you might want to sit down before you read this. And if Jenners was still in business maybe you’d want to be in a window seat in the top-floor tearoom for one last, lingering look at Edinburgh Castle, before it goes. Blow it up. Or take it down brick by brick and sell it to the Americans or some Gulf state built on sand and in need of heritage. The ramparts have loads of the stuff, going all the way back to 1103.

Why? Have I gone insane? Well, consider this: Princes Street is a national embarrassment, Edinburgh’s Disgrace 2.0. The shabby boulevard is intimidated by the great citadel. Down the centuries, kings and queens have resided there; the street cowering below was until recently home to Kingdom of Sweets. The street cannot move on. The castle has had a good run.

I’m joking, of course. This is the sort of nonsense newspapers would dream up as a marmalade-dropper for April Fool’s Day. But is it really so far removed from the sort of nonsense Edinburgh’s civic leaders would dream up? After all, once upon a crackpot era in local government there was a plan to route a motorway across the Meadows…

What is not in dispute right now is that Princes Street has never looked worse. I know this is true of many shopping thoroughfares as the country struggles with a cost-of-living crisis in the aftershock of a pandemic, but we’re not talking about an ordinary, utilitarian, modestly tiered, paved-over, same-as-the-next-town high street. Boarded-up frontages and “To Let” signs are so much more depressing on Princes Street.

As an Edinburgher who’s lived here all his life, it’s grim to have to report this. As a soon-to-be-occupant of Princes Street – The Scotsman’s new address from early in 2024 – I’m contemplating the turbulent retail trading picture and wondering: will the Ann Summers shop even still be there when I arrive at my work-station directly above? And what of the newly emerged ideas for a major revitalisation? Can they save Princes Street? Or will they finally put it out of its misery?

On Sunday, I took a tram ride from east to west to re-familiarise with – cue Glaswegian waggishness concealing some jealousy – the most famous one-sided street in the world. I no longer live in the city centre and hadn’t visited in a while. And of course I had to acknowledge that peak Princes Street for me had been some time before that – back when C&A sold glam-rock fashions and a John Menzies record token was so prized.

Clanging its bell to hurry the phone-fixated off the tracks, my tram swept down to where Sir Walter Scott was, as usual, surveying the scene stony-faced. “Mine own romantic town,” Scott called Edinburgh. His statue is at least situated across from the old RW Forsyth building and an iron-lettered sign still intact confirming that “robemakers” once plied their trade on Princes Street. Elsewhere, though, romance isn’t much in evidence.

Tartan gift shops lock antlers with each other like mangy stags. One outlet calls itself Crest of Scotland while a rival rejoices under the name – is the King aware? – Royal House of Scotland. Cashmere is sold next door to crotchless and there’s a Poundland the same as in Hemel Hempstead and sundry glum market towns. Though Kingdom of Sweets has shut down, other American-style candy stores remain. It’s a safe bet you’d struggle to find a Caramac bar on their shelves, or indeed anywhere else now that they’ve just ceased production.

But times change. And trends change. The consumer who shops online now can hardly complain about his high street dying. And in a vision of the future – sometime around 2040 – offered up by global real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, shops, if they’re shops at all, will be about something called “experiential retail”. Current stores will make way for “exciting new leisure concepts” which will deliver “well-being benefits” catering for “the more health-conscious lifestyle of younger demographics”.

Kids, put down those Greggs sausage rolls and Subway meatballs that I know you love! They don’t fit the blueprint for Princes Street’s bright and shiny new tomorrow powered by AI with electric vehicles barely emitting a murmur as the makeover to a “leisure and tourism hub” is enjoyed to the full.

Ah, these blueprints. They usually come with “artist’s impressions”, don’t they? Pastel-shaded drawings with no beggars or pooing dogs or anything else which conflicts with the municipal fantasy. I bet there was one for Edinburgh’s inner city ring road, 1960s urban planning at its most brutal. The proposed six-lane highway would have smashed through neoclassical Georgian terraces and run round Arthur’s Seat and over the top of Waverley Station before burrowing under Calton Hill and gallumphing across the green and pleasant Meadows on stilts. Thankfully none of it ever happened. “Edinburgh Preserved” was the headline on The Scotsman’s editorial when, after much wrangling, the scheme bit the dust. Older Edinburghers, wherever they visit Glasgow and are reminded what motorways thundering through a city look and sound like, still breathe a sigh of relief at the capital’s narrow escape.

The Conservative administration of what was the old Edinburgh Corporation did not escape from what for them was a political car crash and they were forced to give up power. Their successors would do well to remember how the grandest schemes can fail and take down the bold men and women of vision. A revamped Princes Street may be just about the boldest and most visionary since the inner city ring road. Get this wrong – or blow a fortune on courting tourists while leaving potholes unfilled – and it might be the City Chambers that is detonated.