Sauchiehall Street is a bomb site, Aberdeen’s Union Street is a wasteland, now three central Edinburgh community councils have united to brand Princes Street an embarrassment, the decline of the old high streets a lightning rod for disillusion with the way our towns and cities are managed.

Scotland’s cities are not alone and nor are these streets in their respective cities. Although Argyle Street has not been dug up, it’s a shabby shadow of the respectably bustling street I knew as a child. I didn’t grow up in Edinburgh, but for as long as I can remember people have complained about Princes Street, a general sense that with one of the world’s best outlooks it should be better. Indeed, the 1943 Lord Provost’s Commission on City Development condemned its “monotonous original and chaotic modern frontage,” sadly noting that “in the minds of many the jumble of buildings along this street is now irremediable.”

The resulting 1949 plan by architect and urban planner Patrick Abercrombie took irremediable to its logical conclusion and proposed complete demolition and replacement with a two-level highway and a string of brutalist blocks more akin to East Berlin. Some property owners took the shilling, and the result is a now A-listed block between Frederick and Hanover Streets. Other major physical changes have largely been driven by fires, most notably C&A Modes in 1955 and the Palace Hotel in 1991, and only by good fortune and, tragically, bravery was Jenners saved from a similar fate two years ago.

Entirely predictably, the biggest impact on Princes Street has been the St James Quarter, drawing away middle-market brands like Next, and with the death of the department store it left Princes Street........

© Herald Scotland