Canalside plan

When I first moved to Edinburgh more than 20 years ago, my daily walk to work was accompanied by the heady smell from the breweries at Fountainbridge. Time moves on and it is right to seek new uses for the sites.

But what kind of future? The adjacent Springside development, whose flats have been empty for years now, is a monument to development folly.

The new master-plan (your report, 20 February) needs to be about building with the grain of the existing community and locality.

There is a stark choice between yet another concrete’n’glass cluster, let (or not let) to international chain retailers or corporations, versus a genuinely mixed-use development with small-scale retail, business premises and affordable housing, all designed in a way which enhances the canal setting.

It seems to me that the Fountainbridge Canalside Initiative is brimful of just such ideas, so the developers need to listen reflectively.

Gavin Corbett

Green Candidate for Fountainbridge/ Craiglockhart

Briarbank Terrace

Edinburgh