Edinburgh’s blend of form and function shows us what our broken capital could be
THE Scottish art historian Murdo Macdonald describes Edinburgh as a city that forces you to think about what a city should be. It is an extraordinar y place – on one side sits Edinburgh’s Old Town, the Athens of the north, which looks like it was picked up by a vengeful god and f lung down the side of a volcano.
Its medieval street plan and Reformation-era buildings give the feeling of being trapped in an MC Escher etching, as its streets double back and loop across each other, a city upon a city, a baroque game of snakes and ladders.
Edinburgh is, as native son Robert Louis Stevenson said, what Paris ought to be.
I’ve spent the best part of two decades visiting the cit y, tr ying to solve the puzzle that is the Old Town; this is partly thanks to its labyrinthine layout, partly due to its beauty, and partly due to being hammered, because Edinburgh is both a city of thinkers and a city of drinkers.
Once a year these two worlds collide as the city’s Dionysian festival of festivals erupts into life.
Walking the Royal Mile – the Old Town’s main thoroughfare – during the festival is an incredible experience, as ever y would-be starlet, comedian and artist tries to get you to attend their festival show.
Up and down the Mile f ly-bills f loat on the wind, stages are set up for impromptu performances, and every two steps you are confronted with someone else’s dreams of stardom
– would you like to see a Disney-themed burlesque show?
Would you like to see a troupe of stand-up comedians who used to be secondar y school teachers? Would you like to see a kids’ musical about Brexit?
The Royal Mile has them all: Singers who can’t sing, actors who can’t act, unfunny comedians and all the other stars of tomorrow, watched over by the sour bronze gaze of economist and philosopher Adam Smith, the or iginal Inequalit y Bae.
Of course, to get to the cit y this year I had to confront another cit y that forces you to think about what a cit y should be – Dublin.
Our odyssey to Dublin Airpor t was hampered by roadworks on the M7, but the real treat was seeing the M50 in inaction, lane upon lane of unmoving traf f ic as far as the eye could see.
The time I spent liv ing in Dublin was pre-boom and bust, hav ing upped sticks and moved back to the actual stick s in 2003, so it is a rare occasion that I get to see just how coag ulated the cit y becomes at r ush hour.
It was so bad that I asked the bus driver if there was an accident; no, he replied, it ’s the M50, in much the same as if he was say ing “forget it Jack, it ’s Chinatown”.
THERE have been times when I have wondered if I should have stayed in the city, but each time I return I am convinced I did the right thing by leaving; Dublin feels like it is slowly smothering itself.
Beyond all the questions about what gives a cit y soul, or the fact that the cit y brings to mind Joan Didion’s description of New York – a cit y of the ver y rich and the ver y poor – Dublin feels broken.
Clearly there are similar problems in other cities – any Cork person will tell you about the horror of the Jack Lynch Tunnel at r ush hour, being trapped like the rabbits of ‘ Watership Down’ as their warren was collapsed in on them.
Edinburgh, despite it s beaut y, is far from per fec t , but it was once far worse, and it took a si x-storey tenement building collapsing in 1751 to focus energies on how to improve the cit y.
At that stage the Old Town was the town in it s entiret y, and it was in reaction to it s pover t y and decay that a plan was created to build the New Town, a v isionar y document which noted: “Wealth is only to be obtained by trade and commerce, and these are only carried on to advantage in populous cities.
“There also we f ind the chief objects of pleasure and ambition, and there consequently all those will f lock whose circumstances can af ford it .”
The New Town, built in seven stages, is mostly Georgian and neoclassical in st yle, and has a remarkable blend of form and f unction – beautif ul buildings, wide-open thoroughfares, and a sense of cohesion that any urban space would r ival.
Edinburgh as a whole has the usual urban problems – pover t y, homelessness, r ising proper t y prices, rocketing rents, congestion – but it still allows you to see what a cit y could be, while our capital makes you realise what a cit y needs to become, and to ask just how bad it needs to get before action is taken to address it .