February 18 2013

A University of Edinburgh professor has raised hackles in his adopted city after airing some embarrassing home truths in US based Foreign Policy magazine.

Professor Richard Williams used the platform to paint an alternative view of the capital starting with the twin bugbears which have bedeviled Edinburgh’s recent history; the ‘thrift stores and shabby street frontage’ of Princes Street, (where close to a third of units lie vacant) and a botched $1.5bn tram scheme which is three years late and been reduced in scope to merely duplicating existing bus routes to the airport.

The critical piece went on to cite the city as playing host to ‘some of Europe’s shoddiest attempts at urban regeneration’, notably Edinburgh Waterfront, a stalled bid to transform the former dock area which he described as a ‘dystopian wasteland of vacant lots worthy of a J.G. Ballard novel.’

Williams wrote: “The waterfront reaches its peak of despair at Granton Harbour where a handful of shoddy buildings emerge from a giant mud pool, the inadvertent result of stalled construction. Wrecked bicycles and shopping carts litter the scene. So poor are these buildings, they’re already – after five years – falling down.”

Commenting on the backdrop to these failures Williams noted: “Edinburgh suffers a weird urban malaise. Rather than a city whose time has come, it can feel more like Venice, a once-great city now in abject decline. If the city is a glimpse of Scotland’s future as an independent – or somewhat more independent – nation, Scots may have some cause for alarm.

“Leaving the airport, you do wonder whether the city isn’t actually reverting to its 18th century condition. The spectacularly pot-holed roads, the decay of buildings in the central area, and the remarkable absence of new construction suggest the city council wishes to return to the era of Hume and Stevenson.”

Subsequent to publication Williams defended his views on Twitter, albeit noting that ‘FP’s edit lost some nuances’.

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