Locals have a chance to influence the future of George Street next week at the first of two summer drop-in meetings open to the public.
From 2–7pm on Thursday 13 August, at the Roxburghe Hotel, the newly appointed design team of Ironside Farrar will be available to discuss what George Street needs to achieve its potential. In Council-speak, to:
Review and discuss the challenges and inform the vision for protecting and enhancing [its] special qualities of place.
Such woolly blandishments mean nothing to the business brains behind Essential Edinburgh. They want to make money out of George Street and will single-mindedly press that agenda just as they have done in St Andrew Square.
So, if locals want to put an end to plastic potting sheds on one of Edinburgh’s three world-class streets, if we want to head-off year-round spiegel tents and other excrescences in future, if we want to halt the commercialisation of public space, preserve what is best about George Street and improve it in ways which will allow it to flourish once the St James Quarter has been completed, then we have to use meetings like the one on Thursday to make a heartfelt but rational case.
The alternative, as seen on George Street today, hardly bears thinking about.
Ironside Farrar is a Broughton-based environmental consultancy, two of whose staff addressed the New Town & Broughton Community Council earlier this week.
Julian Farrar and Janet Pope said they were genuinely open-minded about the project, and would not be unduly influenced by loud but not necessarily representative special-interest groups. Spurtle reads that to mean that relatively disorganised residents from across Edinburgh can have a fair input into the process, so long as they get involved.
For more detail on Farrar Ironside’s brief for this project, read here.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
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Samantha Currie Someone should kick Bessie up the but! What an eyesore!
Patrick Hadfield Great - I'll make sure I pop along!
Scobes Rickard I've given up on George Street. It should be one of the best shopping and eating streets in Europe and instead it's a midden.
Broughton Spurtle Don't give up – get involved!