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Wednesday, 9th December 2009

Platform: Time to re-evaluate Caltongate and build what residents want

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Published Date: 04 April 2009
By James Simpson
Edinburgh architect
IT IS hard to understand why Malcolm Fraser, writing in The Scotsman on Wednesday 1 April (sic!) believes that the so-called Caltongate project would be good for Edinburgh's Old Town.
His community credentials, his concern for the city and his track record in creating beautiful small buildings – Dancebase and the Poetry Library in particular – are well known. He listened, spoke moderately and was well-received at a constructive me...



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1

Buttress,

04/04/2009 04:51:18
So why is this 'Premium Content'? It was OK to allow all to read (and repeat on other architecture websites) Malcolm Fraser's inaccurate spleen venting against SOOT and his promoting of himself and his involvement in Caltongate but not James Simpson's response?

Come on Scotsman, I can read the entire Guardian online. In the interests if fairness, you should allow this response to be read by all.



2

Buttress,

04/04/2009 05:03:31

A little history-

Published Date: 23 May 2007
By SHÂN ROSS

EVER since developers revealed controversial proposals to demolish part of Edinburgh's Royal Mile to make way for a £300 million project, campaigners have placed posters in shop windows in the Old Town showing dramatic "before and after" pictures of the buildings under threat.

Now they have a champion in Jenny Dawe, the new Lib Dem leader of Edinburgh City Council, who yesterday described the new Caltongate development in the Canongate as "grotesque and hideous".

Ms Dawe said designs drawn up by Malcolm Fraser, one of Scotland's leading architects, were completely out of keeping with the World Heritage Site.

The proposed six-storey building which the developers Mountgrange want to build opposite the new council headquarters in Market Street would house shops, office space, a restaurant with a terraced cafe and a nightclub or bar."

For more Caltongate see

www.eh8.org.uk
3

Old Town Resident,

edinburgh 04/04/2009 09:35:14
Been out bought a paper, so check out www.eh8.org.uk for all of you not able to get a copy. Thank heavens I did touch typing in my past.
4

Buttress,

04/04/2009 10:03:25
Thank you.

It's here:

http://www.eh8.org.uk/node/849

Rather a more reasoned article than Malcolm Fraser's, expressing views which I suspect many hold.

I wonder if the websites which gleefully repeated Fraser's inaccurate and insulting rant will temper that now by publicing James Simpson's response?
5

Buttress,

04/04/2009 10:15:41
A few extracts:

"Yet very few who care for the history, the architecture, the image and the long term health of Edinburgh could fail to welcome the collapse of the Caltongate developer, Mountgrange.

Everybody wishes to see the site of the old New Street bus garage developed, and any development will build houses and generate employment. The point is that this is a bad scheme, which will devalue the north back of the Canongate for generations to come. It may yet proceed, but the drastically changed development climate creates the opportunity to consider alternatives."

"Have we forgotten the efforts of civilised architects like Sir Robert Matthew and Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith, of campaigners like Eleanor Robertson, Colin McWilliam and Oliver Barratt and of Desmond Hodges and Jim Johnson in the Old and New Towns respectively? These were the people who brought international recognition to Scotland’s capital, and who secured its place as one of the great cities of the world. cities were first laid down in the early 20thC by Sir Patrick Geddes, pioneer town planner and father of urban conservation. Geddes believed that cities were living organisms and, in his theory of “conservative surgery” argued that change in established settlements should, whenever possible, be small and incremental. Why was all this ignored?"

"The answer seems to lie in commercial opportunism, the overweening ambition of the City Council itself at the time to play the development game, to change the very nature of the city to enable it to ‘compete’ with other cities in some sort of economic race."

"The City Council, completely forgetting Geddes, saw the opportunity to extend it to Jeffrey Street and to make it much larger by proposing the demolition of two listed buildings, one of which - the former New Street School - it owned. Why Historic Scotland acquiesced in this is hard to comprehend."

"At its meeting on Wednesday evening, SOOT initiated the establishment of a Canongate Co
6

Buttress,

04/04/2009 10:16:38
Canongate Community Development Trust which intends to open discussions with the City Council, with a view to bringing the existing buildings on the site back into use as soon as possible, temporarily landscaping the main part of the site and developing new proposals for the incremental development of the site for a mixture of uses, including more houses. This may be what the citizens and all those who care for Edinburgh as one of the great cities of the world - including, perhaps, Malcolm Fraser - actually want!




James Simpson is an Edinburgh architect, a member of the Historic Environment Advisory Council for Scotland (HEACS) and a Vice-President of ICOMOS-UK.

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Platform-Time-to-reevaluate-Caltongate.5141589.jp
7

Seb,

04/04/2009 12:45:44
Simpson makes good points,thankfully a lot more civilly than Buttress, who potentially harms SOOT's campaign.
8

Think Tank,

04/04/2009 12:55:38
From a purely PR point of view, Simpson's quote:

"Very few who care for the history, the architecture, the image and the long-term health of Edinburgh could fail to welcome the collapse of Mountgrange"

...is shambolic. It's the frothing-at-the-mouth anti-development attitude that we all know lies behind most of the protesters against Caltongate.

They normally at least try and hide it.
9

Buttress,

04/04/2009 13:03:04
Oh, wondered where Septic was. Clearly up to his/her neck in bile as usual. Do you know James Simpson? Hardly the frothing at the mouth ant-development type. Laughable, Septic1

Oh dear Seb - this is the comments section of the Scotsman, not usually known for rational debate. You have lived up to expectations. ;-0

Somehow you know, SOOT seems to be doing OK. :-)


10

Fud,

Brighton 29/04/2009 18:35:20
Please tell me where the Caltongate starts and ends ?
is it tthe calton hill or where

 

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