Save the Old Town

The Edinburgh Old Town is part of a designated World Heritage Site. Its a curious urban landscape created by building on the tail of a volcano and bound by city walls. Thus creating some of the first 'skyscrapers' as to squeeze in as many people as possible early builders had to build upwards. Some times with disasterous results. Building engineering being ruidmentary one 16 story block topppled over. The results is an urban patch with tiny narrow vennels and closes which have access to back courts and buildings crammed together. In a remarkable society before the building of the New Town in the lat 18th Centuary every class was crammed into the same 'Land' (building) and each 'house' (flat/apartment) would run from the bottom mercantile to nobility in the middle (far enough from the stench of the street but not too far to climb) to the attic rooms where people would lie probably on straw or on rags. Things have improved somewhat in the intervening 200 years, indoors sanitation, a sewer system, electricity but this higgildy piddgily way of living is amongst other things thought of a factor in the creation of the Edinburgh Enlightenment. Now a section of the High street is being threatened with redevelopment into a 200 bedroom hotel and conference centre. We are to get 'piazzas' a completely alien concept to the geography and history of the area (not to mention rather windy I would have thought). This isn't a bloody Italian city... its a cold miserable glakit place with narrow passageways to hide in! A friend of mine lives in the Canongate and is tearing her hair out with her encounters with the planning authories, the local 'authority', at the moment local democracy seems to be completely by passed. If you go to the website there are 3 petitions which if you could sign would make the people fighting this feel a lot less alone.