The following is from a piece in Saturday's Guardian Magazine by Andy Beckett full article hereAfter the fall
Banking turned Edinburgh into a boom town. What has happened to the city since the bubble burst?
"Besides, not everyone was comfortable with the boom-time Edinburgh. Right behind the stalled Caltongate development in the Old Town is the Carson Clark Gallery, a lovely labyrinth of a shop that has been selling period maps and prints of the city since 1969. Co-owner Paul Clark, an Edinburgh bohemian of the old school, with faintly piratical beard and slicked-back long hair, is delighted that Caltongate is not going ahead. "Do we need another five-star hotel?" he asks rhetorically. "Forget this luxury nonsense. This is not Dubai. These developments are the slums of the future. You can already see red rust dribbling out from the drainpipes of some of them." How has his shop done during the recession? "Up and down. But we needed a bit of a leveller in Edinburgh.""
Below the Macrae Tenements that were to make way for the 5- star hotel
