It’s almost the Meadows Festival and for the third year, the World Heritage Team will have a stall to promote the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site.
At previous Meadows Festivals we spoke to people about the Management Plan for the Site, so this is a chance to see how this feedback has been turned into actions for the next five years….
World Heritage at the Meadows 2017
We’ll have information about the Site and activities for our younger visitors. We’re celebrating the Year of Young People with a specially designed game – ‘Auld Reekie Through the Ages’ – a big box of 18th and 19th Century objects which help tell the stories of characters and places that shaped the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh.
We officially started using our current Local Development Plan (LDP) on the 24th of November 2016. This means that this time last week, our LDP turned one!
In celebration, we thought we would write a brief blog post to share with you five things we have achieved in the first year of our LDP.
The LDP allocated almost 700 hectares of additional land for housing. This land could accommodate up to 10,000 new homes, meaning that we’ve now identified enough land in the city for over 31,000 houses.
Of the newly allocated land, sites that could provide over 3,000 homes are already under construction and an additional 1,000 units have received planning consent.
We adopted fiveSupplementary Guidance documents covering the City Centre Retail Core and the Tollcross, Corstorphine, Leith and Bruntsfield & Morningside Town Centres.
We carried out our first feedback survey that asked you how effectively you’d been involved in the creation of the LDP. We look forward to engaging with you more as we move towards our next LDP, LDP 2.
Sign up to our blog mailing list for more exciting LDP updates!
Stone setts add significant historic and cultural value to the streets of Edinburgh and are an important feature of our cityscape.
The City of Edinburgh Council has a duty to protect the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site, Conservation Areas and other historic parts of the city. This protection includes the setting of Edinburgh’s many listed buildings, where setted streets are an integral part of their identity and authenticity.
Setted surface looking West along Dean Park Crescent
Setted Comely Bank Avenue looking South
Setted surface looking East along St. Bernard’s Crescent
When they are not properly maintained, setted streets can have implications for walking, cycling and driving. Damaged setts are often replaced with alternative materials like tarmac as a temporary solution. This can result in an unsightly and uncared for appearance.
Tarmacked corner of Learmonth Place and Comely Bank Grove
Setted surface looking West up Dean Park Crescent
Tarmacked surface looking West towards Edinburgh Castle on Market Street
We are working in partnership with Edinburgh World Heritage and Historic Environment Scotland to develop a strategy for the protection and maintenance of setted streets.
Have your say
To help inform the strategy we’d like to know what you think about setted streets and their value to the city. We are also interested to know what issues you think setted streets can have on our movement.
You can give us your views until Wednesday 11 October 2017.
This weekend is the Meadows Festival! The World Heritage Team will have a stall to promote the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site. There will be information about the Site with cool maps, information leaflets on conservation of historic properties and activities for our younger visitors. We’ll be at the festival on both days and are keen to get your views on the draft management plan for the World Heritage Site.
Fingers crossed for some sunshine and we hope to see you there!
Promoting diversity of cultural heritage of humanity, their vulnerability and the efforts required for their protection and conservation… or something like that idk.
Emma’s blog post #5: World Heritage Day 2017
World Heritage Day 2017 is on Tuesday 18th April, and there’s an event you should go to at the National Museum of Scotland. It starts at 10, and runs through til 4 with workshops on the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh (which make the Edinburgh World Heritage site). There’ll be loaaaaaaads of stuff to do; Victorian materials, a brass rubbing map of the New Town, some World Heritage-related music… I’m also told there’ll be colouring involved. Get HYPED.
You can learn about the statue of David Hume, on the High Street. It’s become a superstition that rubbing Hume’s right foot will bring good luck. Which is ironic, given that Hume believed logical thought is an answer to superstitious beliefs.
Or about the Sir Walter Scott Monument, the biggest monument to any writer in the world.
ORRRR you could find out about the ears of the Alexander and Bucephalus statue in the City Chambers courtyard. You wouldn’t think ears would be interesting. But you’d be wrong.
Hume
Scott Monument
Alexander and Bucephalus
So do go to the event on Tuesday, it sounds like it’ll be good.
As such, I’ll be getting involved in the World Heritage Hour twitter event later on Tuesday, between 18:04 and 19:04. The theme: ‘tell us 5 extra-special things about your WHS’. Get involved even from the comfort of your own home, people, and use the hashtag #WHSHour so we can all appreciate Edinburgh World Heritage ~*together*~.
Planning Edinburgh 
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