Explore your neighbourhood
How much do you know about your area? Here’s a quick guide
The City Centre ward covers the New Town and Old Town, Broughton Street, the West End and Haymarket, Holyrood Palace, Abbeyhill and Calton Hill. Apart from two streets, the area shares the same boundaries as the UNESCO World Heritage site.
With its mediaeval and Georgian architecture, steep streets, narrow closes, tightly packed tenements and rugged volcanic rock, the capital has time and again been named one of the best cities in the UK and Europe.
Edinburgh’s city centre faces a unique set of issues and pressures within Scotland’s capital city. As the public face of the capital, with the Scottish Parliament as well as numerous festivals, events and celebrations, the ward is the destination of more than one million visitors every year.
The City Centre Neighbourhood Partnership works to deliver quality of life improvements for all those who live, work, study, or visit the area and, therefore, enhance its role as an outstanding location for everyone.
Did you know?
There are more than 4,500 listed buildings in the city centre.
London Road Gardens, awarded a prestigious Green Flag this year, is a woodland escape from the bustle of London Road.
The Scott Monument, completed in 1844, is 200ft 6in (61.11m) high, and has a total of 287 steps.
The Floral Clock, created in 1903, is the oldest in the world. It uses about 35,000 plants to create its yearly themes, which have included Hans Christian Andersen, the Girl Guides and 500 years of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Visitors
Edinburgh was the UK’s most visited city after London in 2009, with 1.3 million overnight visits.
Edinburgh Castle is the second most visited site in Scotland after Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow; attracting more than 1.1 million visitors a year.
St Giles Cathedral is another popular attraction; more than half a million people visit each year.
Councillors’ views
We asked councillors in the city centre: “What is your priority for improvement in the area?”
Joanna Mowat, Conservative
Waste collection needs sorting out.
Black bin bags can be ripped open by gulls and foxes and large, on-street containers are ugly and fiercely opposed on aesthetic grounds by many residents.
There are some other options and I look forward to these being trialled on-street in 2011.
David Beckett, SNP
We must continue to build on the improvements already made over the past few years.
A key priority for me is household refuse management, something which affects everybody living centrally.
New ways of keeping our streets cleaner are being developed and I would welcome any suggestions from local residents on this matter.
Charles Dundas, Liberal Democrat
The city centre is incredibly special. Thousands visit every year to explore its heritage. It is not only Edinburgh’s commercial heart but a also a number of close-knit residential communities.
My priority can only be to preserve the good that we have and enhance it wherever we can.
Why does each ward have more than one councillor?
Each Council area used to be divided into ‘wards’ with a single councillor elected to the Council representing each different ward.
That changed with the local government elections in 2007 when a new system was put in place. The wards were made bigger and each one now has three or four councillors who jointly represent voters in that area. Instead of the 58 individual wards that used to cover the city, each with one councillor, the 58 councillors are now spread over 17 ‘multi-member wards’.
The new wards have retained, where possible, natural community boundaries and local ties, using existing community council boundaries as a base.
GOOD TO KNOW: Look out for our profile of Leith ward in the spring issue of Outlook.