WITH the Scottish Parliament already pushing up property values in Edinburgh's Old Town, a major review of the whole area has been
commissioned.
The study is designed to evaluate the impact of public expenditure and aims to provide a factual basis for setting regeneration priorities.
The study has been commissioned jointly by Lothian & Edinburgh Enterprise Ltd, the City of Edinburgh Council, and Scottish Homes. It follows up an earlier review which identified the importance of the Old Town in world tourism, as well as the city's recognition as one of Britain's principal World Heritage sites.
The new survey is to be carried out by a team led by URBED (Urban and Economic Development Group), a not-for-profit research, consultancy, and training group.
After a decade of public investment since the last report, the population in the area has more than doubled, the number of overseas visitors has increased, a major new visitor attraction is under development at the foot of the Royal Mile - and the Scottish Parliament will soon be sited next to Holyrood Palace.
URBED will undertake an economic analysis of the impact of public sector investment, while surveyors Donaldsons will review changes in the property market over the last ten years.
Rents and prices in residential and commercial properties will be assessed by Donaldsons, as will changes in the condition of buildings, and the balance between the property market and levels of private investment.
Other areas of research are being carried out by conservation specialist Colin Davis, tourism consultant Michele Grant, and market researchers Scotinform.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article