planning – Page 8 – Planning Edinburgh

View of Old Town from the Crags looking North West with the Forth Bridges in the distance.

The Management Plan for the Old & New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site is being reviewed and we want to hear your views.

An updated Draft Management Plan is being prepared by the City of Edinburgh Council, Historic Environment Scotland and Edinburgh World Heritage. It identifies issues and opportunities within the site and presents an action plan for implementation over a five-year period.

The issues identified include:

care and maintenance of buildings and streets
control and guidance and contribution of new development
awareness of World Heritage Site status
visitor management
influence and sense of control

This is your opportunity to tell us what matters to you and to help us to best address these issues. We want to hear your thoughts on how the World Heritage Site has been looked after, what works well and what we could be doing better.

We specifically want to know whether you feel we are doing enough to protect and enhance the Site, and any other ideas or suggestions which you may have.

Complete the consultation online by 12 December 2022.

The 2016 Public Life Street Assessments were undertaken by consultants and were funded by the ‘Smarter Choices Smarter Places’ programme. The studies were used in the preparation of the 2017 Town Centre Supplementary Guidance.

A series of studies investigating the public life of Edinburgh’s town centres reveal how each currently functions in terms of pedestrian/cyclist movement and as a place.

Public Life Street Assessments, carried out by design consultants HERE+NOW for the Council, involve a mix of direct observation methodologies, user interviews and more focussed sub studies such as facade, land use and activity studies. In-depth analysis of this data identifies trends in the way people currently use the street environment. This has informed suggested opportunities for improvement.

The assessments supplement the Council’s existing knowledge about how these town centres function and build on existing thinking and work to date, including the Local Development Plan, Town Centre Toolkit and Edinburgh Street Design Guidance.

The studies provide valuable information for all parties with an interest in maximising public life within Edinburgh’s town centres. They have already informed the preparation of Supplementary Guidance for each of the town centres, draft Locality Improvement Plans and a design and an improved public space trial project within Stockbridge.