This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G
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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. ‘Save Our Old Town’: Engaging developer-led masterplanning through community renewal in Edinburgh Christa B. Tooley PhD in Social Anthropology The University of Edinburgh 2012 (72,440 words) Declaration I declare that the work which has produced this thesis is entirely my own. This thesis represents my own original composition, which has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. __________________________________________________ Christa B. Tooley Abstract Through uneven processes of planning by a multiplicity of participants, Edinburgh’s built environment continues to emerge as the product of many competing strategies and projects of development. The 2005 proposal of a dramatic new development intended for an area of the city’s Old Town represents one such project in which many powerful municipal and commercial institutions are invested. As one of the last remaining residential areas of the Old Town, the population of which has experienced in recent decades a gradual transformation towards transience, the Canongate became the focus of a heated campaign organised by remaining residents who sought to claim their rights to participation in the redevelopment of their neighbourhood. This thesis explores the efforts of these campaigners to accomplish a Deleuzian reterritorialisation of the Canongate, in the face of perceived threats to its community, territorial identity and built environment, represented by the development proposal named Caltongate. The remarkable success of the campaign in cultivating a sense of community belonging and mobilising residents in collaborative efforts at reimagining alternative futures for the Canongate was ultimately unable to affect Caltongate’s approval through formalised bureaucratic procedures. Through an innovative programme of community research and representation, however, the campaigners have impacted subsequent community-led planning efforts throughout the Old Town, which emphasise small-scale development that is accountable to both the residential community and the built heritage of the Old Town. The relationship between the Canongate neighbourhood and the proposed Caltongate development, which is currently suspended in the depressed economic climate, emerges in this thesis as mutually constructive, as well as principally opposed. Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the contributions of many individuals and institutions. Firstly, I must thank everyone, from the Canongate to the City of Edinburgh Council, who agreed to share their time, thoughts and opinions with me during the undertaking of my fieldwork; the story I tell in the pages which follow is indebted to you. Awards from Edinburgh University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and School of Social and Political Studies, as well as the Friends of the University of Edinburgh, have facilitated and supported this research project. Guidance and keen suggestions from my supervisors, Richard Baxstrom and Francesca Bray, have sharpened the insights developed in this work, for which I am deeply grateful. My completion of this thesis has benefited further from the enduring support of friends and family; in searching for a suitable expression, I find that words cannot express the debts I owe you nor my depth of feeling for you. In particular, I must thank my husband Andy and my parents Ron and Wanda, whose generosity in all things has truly made possible the writing of this thesis. Finally, this work is dedicated to my son and daughter, both of whom have been born during its writing and have been continuous sources of joy throughout this process. Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Encountering the Canongate . 1 An introduction to the Canongate and Edinburgh . 7 Theoretical orientation of the thesis . 11 Significance of the Canongate case . 15 Organisation of the thesis . 17 Methodology . 22 Chapter 1: City Planning: Becoming Edinburgh . 26 The built environment . 27 Cities as places, plans and possibilities . 29 Development with Deleuze . 34 A history of the development of Edinburgh . 38 Conclusions . 68 Chapter 2: Emergence of the Caltongate masterplan . 71 Devolution and development . 72 City council involvement . 75 A branding strategy. 81 Producing the masterplan . 86 Presenting the Caltongate masterplan . 93 Conclusions . 107 Chapter 3: A campaign and a community in the Canongate . 110 Community in the Canongate . 112 Residents becoming campaigners . 117 Campaign for the Canongate (2005-2008) . 128 Conclusions . 149 Chapter 4: The Canongate Project: Representing and mobilising the Canongate . 152 Introducing the Canongate Project . 157 The work of memory . 162 The reminiscence project . 164 Remembering the Canongate . 167 Conclusions . 190 Chapter 5: The aftermath of Caltongate: Community-led strategies for development . 192 Introducing the Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust . 196 The ongoing reterritorialisation of the Canongate . 200 Integrating heritage and community in the Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust 202 Community, development and planning. 211 Conclusions: Becoming Canongate and Caltongate . 221 Conclusions . 227 Appendix . 234 References cited . 236 Introduction Encountering the Canongate On a brisk June afternoon in 2007, I turn the corner from South Bridge onto the Royal Mile, leaving a long line of breakfast and sandwich shops selling meals to go, budget clothing and home goods stores and a host of corner shops advertising Lotto tickets and the Daily Mail, for an unfolding vista of storefronts lined with kilts, postcards, scarves printed in various ‘clan tartans’ and tam o’ shanters in large display windows, fudge shops making candy while you watch, a large new hotel faced with a faux rubble façade, historic-looking pubs offering haggis and cock o’ leekie soup, the occasional sandwich or coffee shop and the very occasional corner shop, interspersed among the picturesque historic buildings featured on the postcards: John Knox’s House, the Canongate Tolbooth and the Canongate Kirk. The view from the corner of South Bridge is arresting yet frustratingly dim to the camera’s eye; to the west, the Royal Mile climbs a cobblestoned ascent that culminates in the impressive fortress that is Edinburgh Castle—or more precisely, a large parking lot with a portable trailer where you may purchase a ticket to see the castle for £11. To the east, however, in the direction that the Canongate lies, the cobblestones of the Royal Mile slope steeply downward, narrowing from the wide South Bridge entrance as you approach the former Netherbow Port, site of the passage between the once distinct burghs of Canongate and Edinburgh. The sharp descent of the road and the continued slope of the land beyond it afford an improbable horizon of blue water—where the Firth of Forth opens to the great North Sea—the view incredibly framed between the tenements of the Canongate. If you 1 could see to the bottom of the road, which is obscured by its gradually curving shape, you would note that the colourful shops below the imposing stone tenements appear less prolific, and the street becomes all but residential, barring the new Starbucks, a smattering of the obligatory kilt and t-shirt shops and the well-established Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe. Out of this streetfront, relatively quiet for the Royal Mile, the historic grounds of Queensberry House, once a private mansion and later a reforming home for young women, and Whitefoord House, formerly a stately private residence and now a veteran’s home complete with bowling greens, portend your encounter with two of the street’s most notable and monumental structures, one historic and the other aspiring to this status, into which the Royal Mile terminates at a humble roundabout. The lacquered iron gates of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen’s private residence in Edinburgh, face the Royal Mile across this roundabout, while the futuristic new Parliament building occupies the final lot on the southerly side; both structures are large and imposing, while hailing from dramatically different architectural imaginations, and each offers the chance to peruse a self-contained gift shop. On 19 June 2007, a rather small and inconspicuous part of the Canongate’s built environment mysteriously disappeared. Jock the Weathercock, a weather vane fixture atop the bell tower on the historically listed (Class C) Canongate Venture building, formerly the North Canongate Infant School, departed his roost with no advance warning. Jock’s disappearance, as well as the subsequent local reaction to it, evidence not only a heightened state of concern for the area’s built environment amongst residents, but also the