Summary

Throughout its history, Edinburgh has been a city of innovation and change, however; the quality of the public realm in Edinburgh’s city centre has not been able to match its potential as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To ensure that Edinburgh remains competitive, retaining its appeal as a great city for investment, talent retention and innovation, the city must match and exceed best practice globally. The quality of the urban environment is a vital factor for this.

For meaningful transformation to take place, the city recognised that it was no longer a project about improving the public realm or transport strategy in isolation. It demanded a much more cohesive and holistic approach to deliver the radical change needed to challenge system boundaries.

The Edinburgh City Centre Transformation (ECCT) Program is a multi-million-dollar investment to improve community, sustainability, and cultural life. It is an ambitious plan for a vibrant and people-focused capital city centre, one that creates attractive, liveable public spaces, with sustainable and active travel made as easy as possible and with people’s overall health, wellbeing, and happiness at centre-stage. It seeks to reprioritise the use of public spaces, roads, and streets to create a more active, resilient, and inclusive city centre.

The ECCT Program won ‘Best Plan’ at the inaugural Royal Town Planning (RTPI) Scotland Awards for Planning Excellence in 2022^[1], and £1.75m in funding was made available (from active travel charity Sustrans) to support the delivery projects contained within the strategy^[2].

Project objectives

• To develop an ambitious transformation strategy for the city of Edinburgh that seeks to position the Scottish capital as one of the most liveable cities in the world by promoting greater community belonging, improved public and green space, and shift to active travel.
• To develop a delivery plan that provides a detailed, costed programme of projects and interventions that describes the activities that will be undertaken to ensure the strategy is delivered in an effective, cost-efficient, and sustainable way.

Project Description

Throughout its history, Edinburgh has been a city of innovation, heritage, and change, however; the quality of the public realm in the city centre needs to match its potential as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

To ensure that Edinburgh remains competitive, retaining its appeal as a great city for investment, talent retention and innovation, the city must match and exceed best practice globally. The quality of the urban environment is a vital factor for this, however; the city’s outstanding built and natural environment is not matched by the quality of its public realm – where people meet, spend time, and enjoy themselves^[3].

The Edinburgh City Centre Transformation (ECCT) Strategy is an ambitious plan for a vibrant and people-focused capital city centre which seeks to improve community, economic, and cultural life. The vision is to create “An exceptional city centre that is for all, a place for people to live, work, visit and play. A place that is for the future, enriched by the legacy of the past”^[4].

The case for change in Edinburgh city centre covers all three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. The ECCT strategy details the required changes to urban infrastructure, public transport, and public spaces, supported by an evidence-based delivery plan and a detailed business case.

Across the city, the strategy aims to deliver^[5]:

• A walkable city centre with a pedestrian priority zone and a network of connected, high-quality, car-free streets.
• High-quality streets and public spaces.
• A connected network across the city centre of new segregated and safe cycle routes including the provision of a new walking and cycling bridge connecting the Old Town and the New Town.
• Improved public transport journey times, a free city centre hopper bus and public transport interchanges making it easier to switch between rail, bus, tram, taxi, bike, and walking routes.
• An accessible city centre where people of all ages and abilities can explore with lifts, shop mobility, and better signage.
• Reallocation of space by significantly reducing on-street parking, giving greater priority to residents and blue badge parking.

Key Practices Identified and Applied

The ECCT strategy is an urban development project that leverages inclusive and universal design principles to put people at the heart of the city centre vision. It seeks to create an inclusive, healthy, and accessible environment that benefits all.

To aid identification and quantification of drivers of wellbeing within the city in support of the strategy, and to support the business case, a Quality-of-Life analysis was undertaken to provide a monetary valuation of the estimated benefits of the strategy. The analysis identified key priorities (air pollution, traffic congestion, safety for cyclists, and community belonging) and concluded that the strategy will generate £420m of benefits to the city, comprising £110m economic benefit and £310m wellbeing benefit. These monetised social parameters and measurements were explicitly integrated within the business case development process.

Benefits realisation

Stakeholders

Key Beneficiaries and Roles

Lessons Learned

Success factors

• The ECCT won ‘Best Plan’ at the inaugural Royal Town Planning (RTPI) Scotland Awards for Planning Excellence in 2022^[7], and £1.75m in funding was made available (from active travel charity Sustrans) to support the delivery projects contained within the strategy^[8].
• Work is already underway to deliver three city centre transformation projects in accordance with the strategy^[9].
• It is estimated the strategy will deliver £420m of benefits to the city over a 25-year period, comprising £110m economic benefit and £310m wellbeing benefit.

Key challenges

• With this vibrancy and growth come challenges. Whether it’s in increased inequality and pockets of severe deprivation, or greater pressure on city infrastructure and the environment, the city recognises it needs to be agile in the face of change. The way people travel, shop, socialise, work and play are changing, reflecting global trends and new technologies – and most importantly the vision for a better quality of life for all.
• City growth will provide new jobs, homes, and amenities but it must be carefully balanced to provide a high quality of life, access to services and opportunities for all residents, particularly communities living with inequality. Congestion and associated air pollution and health conditions, exacerbated by inactive lifestyles, are directly related to the kinds of places we create and inhabit.