ABSTRACT
Recently, on a ride out to Edinburgh Airport from my home in the city I spotted a sign by the road that informed me of a new town due to appear in the brief and greenish gap between the ring road and the airport. This was to be Edinburgh’s West Town – “Edinburgh’s New Neighbourhood.” Intrigued by the potential arrival of a new neighborhood, I looked it up. West Town is to be a new residential development of 7,000 homes on a 205-acre site. The neighborhood, the website told me, would address the City of Edinburgh’s recently declared housing emergency. It would become a “vibrant, high-density, mixed-use extension to the city with a focus on place-making, sustainability, connectivity, and biodiversity.” It added that the new development is “consistent with the West Edinburgh Placemaking Framework.” This framework, in turn, is informed by Edinburgh’s City Plan 2030, which “...identifies West Edinburgh as a significant urban extension to the city, supporting economic development opportunities within West Edinburgh whilst introducing a balanced mix of uses that promote healthy, sustainable lifestyles and a strong sense of place through the 20-Minute Neighbourhood principle.”1
