The Waterfront

“a wasted opportunity" He told BD: "These kind of opportunities rarely arise. Edinburgh needs to stand back and look and do something as revolutionary as was done during the new town's development."

"The cultural framework has not been sufficiently developed to implement this plan."

He confessed to having a "responsibility to say or do something."

Dennis Crompton Archigram

I have not seen RMJM’s recently submitted MasterPlan but in general I support Dennis Crompton’s comments.  I have, for some time, been saying that the entire waterfront of Edinburgh (of which, Leith Docks is one part, but a big part) should be regarded as the finest waterfront opportunity in the UK, if not Europe.  There has been very little joined-up thinking and certainly little vision of the scale and quality that distinguishes Edinburgh’s past urban planning achievements.  With the recent change in the Council, there has been something of a hiatus but I am now hopeful that the new Councillors, with new senior city officers in place, might well be beginning to recognise that Edinburgh is faced with large scale city making opportunities that have to be urgently grasped.

 

Terry Farrell.

Sir Terry's response to the article is as follows:

"I enclose the original statement I made to BD which as you can see, they took some liberties and said that I “blasted” the waterfront.

I consider this to be a considerable exaggeration of my point of view because I certainly think there have been some good workshops over the past few years on the subject of the waterfront.  But as yet, as I have said, little joined up thinking has emerged but I am still hopeful that it will.

I stressed in my comments to BD that I have not yet seen the planning application by RMJM and that I wasn’t specifically, therefore, criticising what they and Leith ports are proposing.  I was commenting about the broad 10km stretch of the waterfront along its entire length, within which, of course, these ports are just one component.  In this respect, Allan Murray’s comments have completely missed the point I am making because its not the joined up thinking within this masterplan proposal, but how all the masterplans connect together into a single great vision for Edinburgh’s third town – after the Old Town, then the New Town comes Waterfront City, where Edinburgh should demonstrate something comparable with the city making schemes in the 21st century, to match that of our predecessors."

Regards,

Donna Riddington

PA to Sir Terry Farrell