Dig for Victory

"To stop food shortages in the Second World War the government encouraged British people to grow their own food and to turn all spare land into allotments. Gardens, flowerbeds and public parks: any available space was used.

"The Meadows, the Edinburgh Meadows was all converted into allotments… you had an area and it was allocated to you and you could grow certain vegetables on it..."
Click on a link to hear the extract: Broadband version --- Dialup version

Friends of The Meadows Association 21st Century

"There were 520 plots on the Meadows, but there were many other areas around Edinburgh that were used as emergency allotments during the war. These included Balgreen Park, Bruntsfield Links, Victoria Park, Joppa Quarry, Meadowbank, Craiglockart, Craigentinny Golf Course, Inverleith Park and many more. "
see more at Edinburgh Living Memory

The Good Life could be coming to the Canongate

people are continuing to write to the Republic and the press with ideas of what could happen with the empty site....come along to the SOOT "NO FOOLS" public meeting tomorrow and share yours on the 1st April 2009 at 7pm in Old Saint Pauls Church Hall, Jeffrey St. Finding Old Saint Pauls

Blank canvas

Scotsman Letters 31st March 09

WHAT to do with the Caltongate site? How about some grass seed? We don't need any more hotels, we don't need any more empty office space and we definitely don't need another shopping mall.

George Kerevan (Opinion, 26 March) wrote about Spanish architecture. In every major Spanish city, there are bustling sports centres where kids of all ages play in little local leagues into the night and under floodlights. People from the neighbourhood come along and watch, making for a real social, almost family occasion.

Our town council has talked many times about Edinburgh becoming a Milan or a Barcelona in the north, so do what these cities do – provide civic space. Why not be creative with Caltongate? Landscape it. Put in half-a-dozen five-a-side pitches, tennis courts, swings. It could be a Festival venue, a focal point for the Old Town. We could even put up with another coffee shop. Why have a big black hole in our city when we could have a dear green place?BARRY GARDNER Ferry Road Edinburgh

If only ..............

Unlike a city in China desperate to achieve World Heritage Status which is chopping the tops off skyscrapers, we have been spared this drastic action to preserve our status with the demise of Calotongate. The UNESCO report said to be damning of the proposed project and its handling by the City of Edinburgh Council will be published in a couple of months time.

Read this article written in August 2005 perhaps Caltongate developers Mountgrange should have read it before they arrived in the city the same year

From the article -

"And it isn’t just the residential market that will be in trouble. The commercial property sector also has an ominous feel about it. Speculative skyscrapers are going up as much because of their iconic appearance as for the economics of the tenanted sector, and more and more capital is being tied up in real estate rather than put to work in research and development. All over Europe too, money that should be funding the factories and infrastructure that would raise EU productivity is instead seeking out windfall gains in real estate. This will also end in tears and the net result will be the arrival of recession by 2010, something that may well be aggravated in Britain by a new ‘land tax’."

This great photographic website gives a good overall view of when Mountgrange appeared in 2005

The Caltongate Crash

Collapse of inappropriate development
offers capital a chance to think again

In today`s Scotsman 26 March 2009

Every cloud has a silver lining and the demise of Mountgrange and abandonment of the "Caltongate" development (your report, 24 March) is the most positive outcome so far of the current economic crisis.

Those who opposed this project deserve the thanks of everyone who cares for Edinburgh. Had they not objected so vigorously this project would have advanced further, with listed buildings destroyed and a yawning gap site on the Canongate.

Your editorial (24 March) is wrong to suggest local residents made "impossible" demands. Their principal demand was that the city council respect its own and national policies on conservation and the preservation of listed buildings and the world heritage site.

In a throwback to the discredited policies of the 1960s, council and developer colluded to destroy part of a local community. It is a shameful event in Edinburgh's planning history that, with some honourable exceptions, councillors, MSPs, Historic Scotland and the Scottish Government displayed supine acquiescence and impotence in their dealings with this piece of developmental hubris.

Two things should happen now. The council must immediately re-let all the vacant flats which it still owns in the Canongate. It is completely unacceptable that desirable social housing is being deliberately kept vacant to suit a developer. Tenants should also be found for those commercial properties still owned by the council. (Caltongate developer Manish Chande pays the council rent to keep flats empty, read more)

The council must also declare its intention to produce a revised masterplan for this part of the Old town, using its own resources or employing a respected consultant. In "Caltongate" it has allowed itself to be led ignominiously by the developers. The pernicious practice of allowing developers to produce their own masterplan must not be repeated.

On the other side of the Canongate 20 years ago the city council and its partners produced a masterplan for the Holyrood Road site. That area, a literal stone's throw away, was developed as flats, hotels, offices and cultural attractions such as Dynamic Earth and the Scottish Poetry Library. Views may differ about individual buildings, but few will deny that a genuine mixed development took place on that site which respected the traditional pattern of wynds and closes and at the same time gave expression to innovative architecture.

That is the way forward for the New Street site. The council must take charge, pay heed to its own policies and listen to the local community. ROBERT CAIRNS Ratcliffe Terrace Edinburgh

Here is what they are saying -

The Canongate Project

Here is the report on the project in a pdf file. It was published in February 2009

Watch Canongate Project Film here

A special "NO FOOLS ADMITTED" SOOT meeting is on the 1st April 2009 at 7pm in Old Saint Pauls Church Hall, Jeffrey St. Finding Old Saint Pauls

Come along and get involved, you do not have to live in the Old Town but you do have to care for it

Another letter that also appears in todays Scotsman newspaper-

What a driech front page photograph (24 March) – Edinburgh's centre blitzed by the battle of expansion versus conservation. Or could it look like the blank sheet of opportunity – a space which could be developed to learn new ways of creating more equal prosperity and buildings which enhance life and the landscape without overheating the economy and planet?

Suggestions of temporary landscaping could be the preliminary to more permanently pleasing solutions, if carried out as a well-run co-operative project involving paid workers and volunteers – individual citizens and already formed groups. This would create jobs and increase local spending in the short term, with occupation and livelihood motivating alongside learning. Social enterprise is the current label for the business model. JANE GRIFFITHS Middleby Street Edinburgh