NEWS of an Oscar Wilde themed hotel in Edinburgh (“Aparthotel will take a walk on the Wilde side”, The Herald, September 14) prompts some wider reflections on the city’s efforts to encourage development whilst retaining its coveted Unesco World Heritage status.
There was recently a surprising volte-face by Edinburgh’s planning committee when it unanimously rejected the application to turn the empty Royal High School into a luxury hotel, having only failed to approve that application by one vote two years ago.
What happened to radically change the committee’s mind? Was it the chorus of highly literate objections from citizens or was it a belated realisation that the many warnings about killing the goose that lays the golden egg were right?
Or was it a reaction to the two visits from the Unesco World Heritage committee, which prevaricated by only delivering a mild slap on the council’s corporate wrist?
Many citizens, together with the various amenity and environmental organisations, have complained for years about dubious planning decisions endangering Edinburgh’s World Heritage status, all to no avail. If the committee’s recent decision signals a genuine if belated change of heart by the city authorities then it is to be welcomed but any change is too late to undo the damage caused to the city’s fabric over the past 20 years.
It is too late to stop the redevelopment of the St James Centre, with its “walnut whip” hotel jammed into the middle; too late to stop the proliferation of bland budget hotels creeping like a deadly fungus down the Canongate; too late to undo the bleak lump of hotels and supermarkets on the old Cowgate fire site; too late to save the ruination of Edinburgh Central Library from the crude nine storeys of hotel bedrooms that will take the light and view from its reading and reference rooms; and too late to have provided some much needed affordable housing for old town residents on the vacant corporation yard behind Kings Stables Road.
This a site owned by the council, the subject of a community backed planning brief in 2009 that called for housing but that was ignored in favour of a more profitable hotel (albeit one with a tenuous literary theme) and yet more student housing.
Perhaps those who threaten the council with the potential loss of its World Heritage status are barking up the wrong tree. The city does not use that accolade to enhance the protection of its historic buildings and streets; instead it is used as a status symbol to attract visitors and investors – a badge to be pinned on next to “Festival City”.
A reaction has started. Edinburgh’s problems are shared by many other historic towns. No one can live in the centre of Dubrovnik any more, nor in Venice where huge, obscene cruise liners sail up the Grand Canal.
The Italian writer Marco d’Eramo has attacked what he calls Unesco-cide, a deadly disease that kills off genuine historic cities and turns them into sterile museums.
“Unesco’s ‘World Heritage’ listing is the kiss of death,” he says “Once the label is affixed, the city’s life is snuffed out; it is ready for taxidermy ... Where once life throbbed, and cantankerous humanity elbowed its way, pushing and shoving, now you will find only snack bars and stalls, all of them the same.”
So far only one city has fought back: Dresden, “the Florence of Germany”.
The city and the surrounding Elbe Valley were awarded World Heritage status in 2004 but there was a snag: the citizens of Dresden wanted to avoid traffic jams as they crossed the river Elbe, so they needed a new bridge. Unesco was opposed, claiming it would ruin the landscape.
The matter was put to a referendum: a majority of the inhabitants voted in favour of the bridge, even at the risk of losing World Heritage status, which was duly rescinded in 2009.
Edinburgh has been threatened with the same fate as Dresden if it continues its present planning policies. But Dresden can be an opportunity rather than a threat.
Edinburgh could organise a referendum, giving citizens the chance to chose between living in a capital city, with all its attendant functions – legislative, administrative, commercial and cultural – or inhabiting a kind of Scottish Blackpool, full of day trippers, tour buses, souvenir shops, and budget hotels; a place so busy with visitors that going about one’s everyday business would become almost impossible.
The city had a referendum on congestion charging in 2005. Why not have another one on the more fundamental issue of the city’s future character?
Jim Johnson,
8 Kings Stables Road,
Edinburgh.
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