2 February 2012
The Royal Mile Project
John Webster attended the Royal Mile Charrette held by the Edinburgh Council on January 12th, 2012, discussing issues and improvements related to the street. The event attracted a good attendance from local business, the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC), residents, Universities, etc.
John Webster has reported the following from the charrette:
There were introductory presentations by Diarmaid Lawlor who also chaired the day, William Garrett (CEC), Ricardo Marini (CEC) and James Rebank (Cultural & Heritage analyst). I thought Rebank gave a good analysis and highlighted the fact that low value tourism creates a negative image of a city or area, whereas cultural tourism is a growth area and gets higher spend/head from tourists. In other words promote quality and not tat!
He also highlighted that businesses, when relocating, are looking for cities with distinctive identity (culture, architecture) and good transport infrastructure. He gave a good quote from the late Steve Jobs who said that "accountants kill great companies" by going for the bottom line at the expense of innovation and risk.
Interesting density plot of the city showing areas visited by tourists, the bulk was within 1 mile of city centre and mainly of course Princes Street, Old Town, New Town etc. In other words, that is where you want to concentrate resources to produce quality environment. He gave Bordeaux as an example where this selling of culture and surroundings has been very successfully done.
The afternoon was spent in group sessions analysing several issues relating to the Royal Mile including Pedestrian Experience, Retail Offering, Day to Day Management and identifying the most urgent issues that needed to be addressed.
Needless to say the issues flagged up included:
- Traffic;
- Mixed retail offering and need to reduce tat and get better quality goods;
- State of Closes (side lanes dirty and threatening);
- Trade Waste (bins all over the place and not appropriate);
- Poor signage for tourists (no routes to follow; little history notes);
- Narrow pavements in parts and run down buildings
This led to range of suggestions including:
- Need for Royal Mile manager and team to inspect, improve, with serious powers for action;
- Need for a focussed strategy for the Royal Mile;
- Need for strong political leadership with committment to improvement(monthly walkabout to flag up issues etc).
- Better facilities such as toilets, signs etc;
- Better accountability of CEC Deps (strong complaint from one shop owner about lack of action despite several contacts with CEC);
- Need for better lighting of closes and better waste facilities (trade)
The actions agreed at the end of the day (we shall see if it happens!) were:
- Appoint Manager and build team;
- Draft out Action Plan (Diarmaid Lawlor);
- Carry out "spring clean" of whole area;
- Develop marketing strategy and aim to promote Scottish quality products (food, clothing ...)
For more information on the Royal Mile Project, visit
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/RoyalMileProject