Edinburgh New Town: Model City

Edinburgh’s New Town, built between 1765 and 1830, is one of Europe’s finest neoclassical neighbourhoods, a triumph of town planning and a UNESCO World Heritage site. But the importance of the New Town goes beyond its architectural significance. More than two centuries after its building, the New Town emerges today as not only a carefully conserved Georgian neighbourhood but a vibrant mixed-income social community in which people from all walks of life live in harmonious surroundings. Those include over 10,000 separate properties of enormous variety, and the shops, schools, pubs, restaurants and community facilities which contribute to the quality of urban life in a historic setting. This book analyses and celebrates the history and the physical and social achievements of the New Town. Using text, photos, drawings and diagrams, the authors explore the New Town in terms of its inspiration in the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the factors that politics, land ownership, finance, design, and materials played in its development. It goes beyond the two stages of the Georgian new towns to encompass its influence on the contiguous Victorian new town.The area constitutes one of Europe’s most extensive and vibrant historical neighbourhoods. The books concludes by linking the New Town to current debates on urban architecture and sets out why the New Town can serve as an inspiring model for future new communities in cities around the world.