City of Edinburgh Council looks set to develop a more coherent strategy for the use of public space.
A report will go before the Corporate Policy and Strategy Committee (CPSC) in March, and – if approved – a two-year project to compilie a ‘Public Spaces Manifesto’ would follow.
The manifesto – cutting across many CEC departmental boundaries and covering all parts of Edinburgh – would, among other matters, address:
- commercial use of civic space
- mono-use of civic space
- over-use of civic space.
It would not deal with parks, which are the subject of a separate 'Edinburgh Parks Events Manifesto' published last summer.
This new initiative has been in the offing for some time, and is not a knee-jerk response to concern in the last year about the George Street experiment and ‘exploitation’ of St Andrew Square.
It has emerged in part from a 'Review of Events Governance' presented to the CPSC in November 2013 (see foot of page). That report aspired to a further report on 'key principles to be incorporated into revised processes' early in 2014.
Perhaps recent public discontent has added a little urgency to that stalled next step.
The original process was aimed at streamlining applications for future events organisers, but – and this is interesting given the current context – anothther aim was 'to ensure greater transparency, consistency and assessment of stakeholder impact, when taking decisions about events on key public spaces'.
We understand the new manifesto could be even more wide-ranging.
Spurtle welcomes what sounds like an important, far-reaching reappraisal.
It is intended to give the Council a more proactive and prescriptive role.
It could help locals – who are easily wrong-footed by the speed and frequency of commercial interventions – through earlier notification and improved consultation.
Whether it will have any effect on the centre of St Andrew Square, which is a private space, remains to be seen.
On that front, we suspect critics’ most effective line of defence for now involves: (1) directly telling Essential Edinburgh how they feel; (2) telling local politicians how they feel; (3) prompt objections to planning and licensing applications as they arise.
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