Council Bin Policy : World Heritage Site

Comment on Edinburgh City Council / Streetscape Board Policy

Cockburn Association Comment:
Edinburgh Bins / Edinburgh Arts 2000 Year of Architecture & Design 1999 Bid

COMPETITION: Four in a row

My office is a mess with bulging filing cabinets that cover the last thirty years of the Cockburn’s involvement in Edinburgh. On a recent foray into the unknown I came across two documents that set out the case for Edinburgh’s bid to host the Arts 2000 Year of Architecture and Design 1999.

Many of you will remember that time of heady excitement and will also be aware of the outcome and the name of the city, which has benefited so greatly. But how many of you have gone back to that document and re-read the grand aspirations that have been left gathering dust. Forget visions, action plans and mission statements, this document provided everything that Edinburgh needs to achieve.

If we delve into Edinburgh 99 then we find the fantastic assessment that ‘Edinburgh is conscious of the need to promote and conserve a distinctive design character for its public places’ and then the author states that ‘too may British city streets have acquired a bland uniformity through their catalogue design’. To show that they meant business they then went and designed a new bin that was introduced on the High Street (although two can be found on Picardy Place for no apparent reason).

Now those of you who know me will appreciate that if there is one thing that gets my goat it is street clutter. Friends think I am starting to go mad as a discuss lampposts and examine bollard design in numerous UK cities. It just seems sensible that using high quality street furniture will vastly improve the standard of our public realm. But the bit that the City of Edinburgh Council always forgets is the requirement to use this street furniture in a uniform manner.

Their recent initiative to purchase two hundred off the shelf bins and then scatter them around the city centre is a difficult one to support. This is made worse when you discover that the City Council operates a Streetscape Board to advise them on design and location in the World Heritage Site. It appears to have been side-stepped in the name of progress and cleanliness.

Edinburgh Bins - Competition
The basic challenge that I am setting is to find a location in the city centre where you can see four (or more) types of council operated bin. My highest number at present is three and this is standing outside the Planning Departments office at 1 Cockburn Street. Entries to the Cockburn Association, Trunks Close 55 High Street EDINBURGH This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Footnote
While studying the Edinburgh 99 document I came across the desire for an Architecture & Design Centre to be created in Edinburgh to provide ‘the UK’s first dedicated point of interface between the public and the design professionals. Work on the Centre has already begun.’ The desire for this essential tool has to be reborn and brought back into the arena. In my next month’s article I will look at the options available to the city.

Edinburgh & Bins: Martin Hulse, Cockburn Association Aug 02

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