“A Vision for Capital Growth 2020 – 2040”: An invitation to voice your views

Have you ever thought about how Edinburgh and the Lothians might look in ten, 20 or 30 years time? While the science fiction visions of the future may not materialise, we still need to think about the places we want to create and the economy, environment and society we want to promote.

The Council has started just such a debate, by publishing a new vision of what it believes the city of Edinburgh and the region of the Lothians could look like as far ahead as 2040: “A Vision for Capital Growth 2020 – 2040”.

Since the advent of modern town planning, in the late 1940s, Edinburgh has been a consistently prosperous city.

It has maintained much of its historical heritage, while also maintaining a strong economy and an excellent quality of life for the majority of its citizens.

However, Edinburgh now finds itself in a global economy where to sustain the quality of life it must compete with other cities around the world as a location to live, work and visit.

To do this, the Vision sets the challenge of three questions:

• Should the Edinburgh city region plan for significant growth?
• If so, should it be close to the city or dispersed through the region?
• How can development be delivered sustainably?

Successful cities are the ones that are big enough to offer their existing residents a broad range of employment and lifestyle choices and this, in turn, appeals to others who want to move to the city.

It is, therefore, important that Edinburgh’s growth is guided by a coherent long-term vision of the city’s future which balances the economy, the environment and social needs – an incremental, short-term approach will not work.

The city faces a number of key challenges:

• a workforce that does not necessarily have the correct skills and experience for the jobs available
• a lack of affordable housing
• a transport system that is increasingly affecting the environmental quality of the city.

A combination of the first two challenges means that in order to meet demand, Edinburgh currently imports around one third of its workforce from the surrounding local authorities and this is forecast to increase.

This has led to a continuous increase in commuters travelling into the capital from ever greater distances.

With Edinburgh’s ‘travel to work area’ already incorporating large areas of the Borders and Fife and extending as far as Tayside and Glasgow, continuing this pattern raises clear sustainability issues as identified in the third key challenge.

Where should growth go?

In the medium term, we believe growth can be directed towards existing brownfield sites within the city and to other planned development locations in the planning pipeline. However, this is unlikely to be sufficient in the longer term.

With the majority of jobs in the city region based in the city it makes sense to try to provide the opportunity for people to live closer to the city and therein contain the growth of commuting.

Providing affordable homes in and close to the city is vital for the ongoing vitality of the city. As is the delivery of a world-class integrated public transport system that gives easy access to jobs and services.

To help achieve these aims as sustainably as possible, the Council is suggesting the development of key development corridors – like fingers stretching out from a hand, separated not by a continuous green belt, but by a green belt made up of large green wedges.

These are bold ideas, but we think that to harness the enormous benefits that accompany the demand for growth, a bold approach is required.

For there to be a debate there needs to be opinions and that is where you can play a part. We need to know what you think about the future development direction for the city.

The vision document, “The 2040 Vision for Capital Growth” is available to download from the website at: www.edinburgh.gov.uk/2040vision or by phoning 0131 469 3638.

You can e-mail any comments to: 2040vision@edinburgh.gov.uk, or write to: 2040 Vision Feedback, The City of Edinburgh Council, PO Box 12472, 1 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1ZH. The consultation exercise runs until 30 June.