The director of the Edinburgh International Festival believes that public opinion should be mobilised to help prevent ugly new buildings jeopardising the city’s reputation as an “exquisite” setting for the arts.
Fergus Linehan spoke out amid rising concern that a mixture of intrusive commercial development and the proliferation of buy-to-let properties is destroying the historic character of the city.
Mr Linehan said growth and new development was essential for Edinburgh, but added: “We need to get a discussion about design and public space out into the open. We absolutely have to protect the city. Anything that takes away what’s special about Edinburgh will definitely diminish the festival.”
Heritage campaigners are aghast at a rash of new commercial developments. New Waverley, a £150 million office and hotel complex, is said by critics to be completely at odds with its setting in the medieval Old Town.
Near by in Leith Street, a brutalist 1960s shopping centre is being demolished only to be replaced by a mall and a 12-storey hotel.
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A bitterly-contested 11-storey hotel in copper and concrete next to the Grassmarket is also going ahead.
Last year Francesco Bandarin, a senior Unesco official, suggested that Edinburgh city planners were treating the historic city as if it were Dubai.
Mr Linehan, the tenth Edinburgh International Festival director, said the city’s “exquisite” architecture was a prime reason for its choice as the festival city in 1947. Since then people had often asked about the core purpose of the festival. “They say: ‘Is this about opera? About theatre? About music?’ It’s about Edinburgh, really, at its heart,” Mr Linehan said. “If you took everything we did, and did it in Watford, with all due respect to Watford, it is not going to have the same effect.”
Mr Linehan’s concerns were echoed by Alexander McCall Smith, the novelist, who said new developments had left Edinburgh at “a tipping point”.