Stalled beauty

I agree with Stephen Jardine about the Princes St Gardens Christmas booths (Perspective, 6 January). Appropriately, this smaller-scale planning by numbers sits almost in the shadow of the same approach in an earlier venture, now Edinburgh’s ugliest sight – ever.

The about-to-be-former St James Centre was surely more deserving of the epithet Edinburgh’s Folly than its neighbour, Calton Hill’s Athens of the North Collection. At least

the latter now enhances the city’s magical interaction of dramatic topography, fine buildings, streets and space, within its sea and hills frame.

Sometimes the clang of the pretty trams sounds like the death knell of Edinburgh’s special beauty – as projects pile up to fill the hole they left in the civic finances.

JANE GRIFFITHS Middleby Street, Edinburgh