Why it’s all change for Edinburgh – Joanna Mowat

Last year I was on holiday in Canada and found myself sitting next to the former mayor of Elliot Lake, George Faroukh. Elliot Lake was founded in 1955 as a mining town and attracted adventurers and professionals from across the world with its opportunities.

George was elected mayor in 1991, and a few weeks later the chief executive of the mining company came to tell him that they were pulling out of the city. George’s response was that he wasn’t going anywhere until the city was back on its feet and had found a new way to prosper – he stepped down as mayor in 2006.

I have thought of George’s determination and fortitude often over the last few months – when he told me how Elliot Lake’s economic underpinnings were removed, I couldn’t have imagined that a year later Edinburgh would be facing a similar threat.

Lockdown revealed the haunting beauty of city centres across the world but has also starkly shown that they were created for and rely on people and activity for their very existence.

What is a city centre for with no people? There is a fragile community hanging on in the Old Town and the path forward must address how the balance had tipped away from meeting the needs of the communities at the heart of the city to meeting those of the visitor.

We have that opportunity and should be grasping it with both hands.

We have a new and urgent problem too – a lack of people in the city centre – last year we had 4.5 million visitors and 25,000 to 30,000 daily commuters.

We can argue whether 4.5 million was too many but that is a pyrrhic argument as many of those visitors will be staying away for some time and there is little we can do to influence that.

This gives us time to address some of the problems caused by poor management and to put that management in place for when numbers do increase.

Of more immediate concern is the lack of daily commuters who support businesses, the exchange of ideas, networking and new ways of seeing things that happen when you bring lots of people together.

It is what makes a city a city and has done throughout history. It’s why people put up with the discomfort of living in a city compared to comfortable market towns or villages.

Culturally the preservation of the city centre is important, and the heart of the city is at risk.

Edinburgh’s strengths may become her weaknesses as we struggle with suppressing a virus in a way that challenges everything that makes a city a city.

We need leadership to address these challenges and we need engagement from the leaders of the council with all key sectors so that the path forward is built on firm foundations.

There are forks in that path but finding the firm foundations requires us first to look back at what problems existed before the people disappeared.

We then need to put in place measures we know are needed but have found too difficult to implement because they meant a change in the way things were done.

Everything has to change – so let’s use that to the city’s advantage and make the path ahead better than the path we left behind.

Cllr Joanna Mowat is a Conservative councillor for the City Centre ward

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