Managing the World Heritage City

In late-September and early-October 2019, twelve Iowa State University (ISU) students in CRP 391 Field Travel made their way to Edinburgh, Scotland, and spent ten days exploring the city and learning from local planners, preservationists, architects, and developers. The purpose of the class was to introduce ISU undergraduates to the challenges of urban planning and development in a city renowned throughout the world for its built heritage--for its numerous historic buildings, monuments, and preserved neighborhoods. The class was organized and led by Dr. Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation, Department of Community & Regional Planning.

Our case study for this class, Scotland’s second city and capital, is among Europe’s most popular tourist destinations. Unlike Glasgow, its larger and grittier neighbor to the west, Edinburgh was less heavily reworked by urban renewal in the 20th Century and retains its mediaeval quarter and Georgian urban ensembles from the 18th and 19th Centuries. The city today provides planning and design students with an ideal case study for exploring how cities develop over time and how the tangible remnants of their past--their cultural heritage--can be successfully integrated into the changing urban fabric to create a functional, attractive environment.

Supplementing a full agenda that included daily meetings with local experts, walking tours, and site visits, students were given time each day to explore the city on their own and experience its nuances in an unplanned and unstructured way. This was in keeping with the pedagogical mantra of Scotland's most influential town planner, Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), and the adopted slogan of our local partner organization, the Patrick Geddes Centre:

Vivendo Discimus: By living we learn.

CRP 391 Field Travel is a required course in the CRP undergraduate curriculum. Offered every semester it typically involves a week-long field trip to a city or region within the US that provides a unique, firsthand perspective on planning or the planning profession. In recent years, faculty have increasingly taken CRP 391 students abroad, primarily to cities within Europe, in alignment with the university's mission to help students became global citizens.

Learning objectives for this offering of CRP 391 were designed to reflect Edinburgh's unique status as a UNESCO World Heritage city. In taking this class students would develop:

• a broad understanding of Edinburgh, Scotland's capital and second most populous city, as well as one of the most historic planned cities in the world
• an understanding of the challenges of maintaining the city's history and iconic form while allowing growth and new development
• an understanding of the challenges of preserving a historic US Government building, a functioning diplomatic mission located at the heart of the World Heritage area
• the ability to identify and understand the problems, challenges, and opportunities facing a city like Edinburgh today, particularly related to growth, mass tourism, and climate change impacts
• the ability to identify the various actors (public, private, non-governmental, etc.) involved in planning and managing the historic city and understand their unique roles
• the ability to explore and analyze an unfamiliar urban environment using the same skills as that of a professional planner or preservationist
• the ability to better 'read' the urban landscape through firsthand exposure
• an appreciation for how cities outside the US look, feel, and function
• a level of comfort in navigating and exploring a major world city

For this class, we had two primary partners:

The historic A-listed Scottish Historic Buildings Trust was engaged to provide tours and lectures, as well as space at the Patrick Geddes Centre where students would congregate. The Trust, in turn, tapped into its local base of experts--academics and practitioners--to provide lectures on a variety of planning and land use topics, as well as tours of many of Edinburgh's distinct neighborhoods. Our hosts at the Trust were Una Richards and Russell Clegg, who were both immensely knowledgeable and helpful.

Our work with the US Consulate was the result of a unique partnership between ISU and the  Office of Cultural Heritage , US Department of State in Washington, DC. The ISU-US Department of State Cultural Heritage Documentation Project, founded in 2016 by professor Grevstad-Nordbrock and architect Tobin Tracey, provides students with an opportunity to study, in situ, historic diplomatic buildings (embassies, chanceries, consulates, ambassadors' residences) and their urban environments, exposing them to the challenges of managing historic properties in an international, multi-jurisdictional context. Previous projects included field travel to London (Fall 2016) and Stockholm (Spring 2018). Future trips are planned.

Students in CRP 391 were required to participate in all scheduled activities with our partners. They were also required to document their time in Edinburgh through journal entries and photography, as well as a recordation technique called sketch-noting.

Sketch-noting is a useful tool for encouraging students to carefully examine their environments, noting their salient and interesting features. The sketch-note of ISU's Tower Dorms, below, was provided to students as an example of this technique.

Students were provided guidance for their sketch-noting efforts while in Edinburgh:

• No smart phones or cameras! Each student should record their experiences in a less passive and technology-dependent way. (You will use your phones and cameras elsewhere on the trip.)
• No advance research! Arrive at our sketch-noting sites as if you've never visited or heard anything of them before.
• Find a place to sit down at a spot where you can take in your surroundings.
• Record, through rough sketches and hand-written notes, whatever grabs your attention about the site. Take your time and don't rush. But at the same time, don't agonize over your drawings--representational fidelity is not what you're after! The drawings should capture your impressions about the places we visit.
• Describe the entirety of the urban environment. Consider not just the buildings, but the right-of-ways, the open spaces, any monuments, memorials, or art, etc., and the holistic streetscapes they create.
• Consider the density of the buildings. Do they stand in isolation or are they part of an ensemble?
• Consider each individual building's use as well as prevailing uses within the immediate neighborhood.
• Do the buildings seem old? New? Well-maintained? Underused? Unused? Abandoned?
• Ask yourself: how do people seem to interact with these environments? What types of people are prevalent in these environments?
• This may sound odd, but use your other senses--try to note the sounds and smells that are specific to certain parts of the city.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the weather during our time in Scotland was often not conducive to methodical sketch-noting in out-of-doors settings. Nevertheless, excerpts from the students' notebooks, along with photos and journal entries describing their experiences, are included in this Story Map. These are supplemented with the instructor's own field notes and an essay written by CRP graduate assistant Andrew Fackler.

Historic Edinburgh is traditionally divided into two distinct areas: Old Town and New Town. In Old Town one finds the architectural vestiges of the mediaeval city with its tangled system of narrow streets, courts, and closes, and over which Edinburgh's picturesque fortress presides from atop Castle Hill. New Town features 18th and 19th century planned developments meant to convey the city's global aspirations through elegant, aristocratic architecture and urban design ensembles executed by prominent architects of the era. Together, the Old and New Towns make for a startling juxtaposition of two urban environments: one, an organic mediaeval quarter, the other a highly planned series of townscapes from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Old and New Town were listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The listing nomination notes how "[t]he dramatic topography of the Old Town combined with the planned alignments of key buildings in both the Old and the New Town, results in spectacular views and panoramas and an iconic skyline." These sections of Edinburgh met UNESCO's standards for World Heritage listing under two criteria related to architecture and town planning:

• Criterion (ii): The successive planned extensions of the New Town, and the high quality of its architecture, set standards for Scotland and beyond, and exerted a major influence on the development of urban architecture and town planning throughout Europe, in the 18th and 19th centuries; and
• Criterion (iv): The Old and New Towns together form a dramatic reflection of significant changes in European urban planning, from the inward looking, defensive walled medieval city of royal palaces, abbeys and organically developed burgage plots [an ancient form of property tenure] in the Old Town, through the expansive formal Enlightenment planning of the 18th and 19th centuries in the New Town, to the 19th century rediscovery and revival of the Old Town with its adaptation of a distinctive Baronial style of architecture in an urban setting.

Both Old Town and New Town retain high levels of historic integrity and authenticity under UNESCO's World Heritage eligibility guidelines. Edinburgh World Heritage, a registered Scottish charity, advocates for the preservation and continued use of this world-renowned site.

World Heritage listing is honorific and imposes no restrictions on the municipality or its residents. However, most of the World Heritage site is, in fact, protected under the local landmarks ordinance of the City of Edinburgh Council. The layering of these heritage areas, and the complexities this represents for planners, designers, and developers, as well as everyday residents, is evident in the map below.

A single property, the US Consulate at 3 Regent Terrace, indicated on the map as a blue tag, is subject to oversight under multiple heritage laws and guidelines:

• World Heritage/World Heritage Trust listing
• Historic Environment Scotland listing as part of "Calton A Group" under Planning (Listing Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997
• Historic Environment Scotland listing as part of "New Town Gardens" site, inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes
• City of Edinburgh Council "New Town" Conservation Area listing
• US Secretary of State's Register of Culturally Significant Property

To Edinburgh's two famous quarters CRP 391 students were introduced to a third: the neighborhood of Leith. A once-independent town on the capital's north side, at the mouth of the River Forth where it empties into the North Sea, Leith is a working-class district that shows many of the classic signs of upgrading and gentrification.

Taken together, Old Town, New Town, and Leith provided students with a window onto the diverse challenges that planners, preservationists, architects, developers, and local officials face in managing a World Heritage city.

The UNESCO nomination for the "Old and New Towns of Edinburgh" (1995) describes the setting and significance of the Old Town in this way:

"The Old Town stretches along a high ridge from the Castle on its dramatically situated rock down to the Palace of Holyrood. Its form reflects the burgage plots of the Canongate, founded as an 'abbatial burgh' dependent on the Abbey of Holyrood, and the national tradition of building tall on the narrow 'tofts' or plots separated by lanes or 'closes' which created some of the world's tallest buildings of their age, the dramatic, robust, and distinctive tenement buildings. It contains many 16th and 17th century merchants' and nobles' houses such as the early 17th century restored mansion house of Gladstone's Land which rises to six storeys, and important early public buildings such as the Canongate Tolbooth and St Giles Cathedral. The Old Town is characterized by the survival of the little-altered medieval 'fishbone' street pattern of narrow closes, wynds, and courts leading off the spine formed by the High Street, the broadest, longest street in the Old Town, with a sense of enclosed space derived from its width, the height of the buildings lining it, and the small scale of any breaks between them."

CRP 391 students' home base during their time in Edinburgh was the Patrick Geddes Centre located at Riddles Court in Old Town. Dating from the 1590s, this former mansion built by George Riddell, a prominent local merchant, was an appropriate home for a class exploring heritage and planning within the contemporary city. Several noteworthy Scots are connected with the building: philosopher David Hume lived here in the 1750s and town planner Sir Patrick Geddes held summer schools here beginning in the 1880s. With the work of Geddes as inspiration, Riddles Court was given new life in the 21st century when the non-profit Scottish Historic Buildings Trust leased the building from the City of Edinburgh and established the Patrick Geddes Centre, a place for learning about heritage conservation and urbanism.

The morphology of Edinburgh's Old Town suggests an urban entity that has grown in fits and starts over many centuries, reworking itself again and again in ways both small and large. The end result is a disorderly, complex, convoluted environment, one that draws visitors seeking an unfamiliar and distant past. New Town, in contrast, represents a more calculated and controlled series of building campaigns over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. It represents the physical and functional imposition of order on what was then a very chaotic cityscape.

The UNESCO World Heritage nomination describes New Town in this way:

"The New Town, constructed between 1767 and 1890 as a collection of seven new towns on the glacial plain to the north of the Old Town, is framed and articulated by an uncommonly high concentration of planned ensembles of ashlar-faced, world-class, Neoclassical buildings, associated with renowned architects, including John and Robert Adam (1728-92), Sir William Chambers (1723-96), and William Playfair (1790-1857). Contained and integrated with the townscape are gardens, designed to take full advantage of the topography, while forming an extensive system of private and public open spaces. The New Town is integrated with large green spaces. It covers a very large area of 3,288 hectares, is consistent to an unrivaled degree, and survives virtually intact. Some of the finest public and commercial monuments of the New-classical revival in Europe survive in the city, reflecting its continuing status as the capital of Scotland since 1437, and a major centre of thought and learning in the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, with its close cultural and political links with mainland Europe."

Essay by Andrew Fackler (CRP graduate student, MCRP '20)

William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) was a Scottish architect responsible for many of Edinburgh's most famous Neoclassical, Gothic Revival, and Georgian buildings and structures--including Regent Terrace, home to the US Consulate. The designer of the city's Eastern New Town and such landmarks as the Scottish National Gallery, the Royal Scottish Academy, and the City's Observatory, among countless others, the importance of Playwright and his impact on the landscape and design of the City of Edinburgh today cannot be overstated.

With regards to Regent Terrace, Playwright imagined his new development (dubbed as the "Eastern New Town" or "Calton" scheme) as an architectural showpiece surrounding Calton Hill, an area in central Edinburgh that today hosts the Scottish Parliament Building, prominent monuments, and other iconic displays of the culture, history, and global aspirations of Enlightenment-era Scotland. Regent Terrace and nearby Carlton Terrace and Royal Terrace were constructed to make the most of the surrounding topography, views, and scenery, and overlook a massive radial street pattern below with gardens and other elegant streetscape features. Although the development started off well, desirable new residential neighborhoods to the west of New Town slowed construction considerably in the mid-1800s. As a result, although Regent Terrace and it's surroundings remain an impressive urban ensemble in their own right, little of Playwright's original New Town plan came to fruition, as piecemeal industrial, residential, and transportation developments to the north of Calton Hill made the execution of the original plan all but impossible. Despite all this, however, Regent Terrace and it's surroundings remain an exemplary example of the Georgian architecture and history of New Town.

This is an image of the half-finished Parthenon... on the way to Calton Hill. This neoclassical architecture is not unlike that... seen in the ancient forum of Rome. This connection between a revival of the ancient and intense historic preservation of the mildly old in comparison is very interesting to me. The whole neo-classical era shows how architectural and cultural trends ebb and flow. It would be interesting to see in a couple of hundred years if the architectural trends of Edinburgh in the 14-16th centuries become more popular. Edinburgh's historic preservation is important but it’s interesting to see this put next to the traditions of the old that weren’t actively preserved yet still persist.

-Sara B., CRP 391 student

Embassies and consulates exist to do more than simply provide aid to their nation’s citizens while abroad. These services are important, to be sure, but even more significantly diplomatic missions represent a foreign government’s physical presence abroad, often becoming touchstones of civil unrest, changing political winds, and historic social underpinnings. Everything from what these structures look like, how they are maintained, their size, and especially their location help define the perception of that nation to a foreign government and its people. Embassies, of course, are traditionally situated in a host nation's capital. Consulates are a smaller than embassies, with fewer local services, though arguably no less important in their context. Their host cities often have a high volume of tourists from the country that the consulate represents, or a large number of expatriates, or they exist for strategic economic or military purposes. The United States has more embassies and consulates than any other country--over 300 worldwide--and as the world changes and evolves, their presence has become more necessary than ever before.

For the Edinburgh-bound CRP 391 class, the historic A-listed US Consulate at 3 Regent Terrace, in New Town, was a key part of the broader exploration of a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage City. The building provided a touchstone for exploring the challenges of preserving a historic diplomatic mission in a highly-regulated, multi-layered heritage environment, in a "hot market" city that it is growing and constantly changing. It also allowed students to consider the meaning of this diplomatic mission--the American-Scottish bond that its tangibly represents.

The United States and Scotland share a common heritage that goes back to the very founding of America, and this relationship has continued through a shared language, close trading partnerships, and a strong sense of culture and heritage between the two nations. Tens of millions of Americans claim at least some Scottish ancestry today--not least among them a majority of US presidents--and Scottish place names are used across the continent: Bannockburn, Caledonia, Dundee, Elgin, Glencoe, Glenwood, Inverness, and Midlothian can all be found in a single metropolitan area, Chicagoland. Every year hundreds of thousands of Americans travel to Scotland, and Scots to the US, for business and pleasure. With ties this close, the importance of a strong and positive American presence in Scotland cannot be understated.

The US Consulate's presence in Scotland dates back to 1798, when President John Adams appointed Harry Grant to be the fledgling country’s first Consul in what was then the independent town of Leith. The American consular system spread across Scotland throughout the 19th century, with eight other cities hosting consulates and consular agencies well into the 20th century. The primary consulate, however, remained the one located in Leith and Edinburgh, which bounced between locations for decades before settling in Edinburgh and its current premises in 1951. Today it stands as America’s sole Consulate in the country. Nearly fifty people have served as Consul General in Edinburgh, including an unbroken line of women since the 1990s after nearly two hundred years of men.

Throughout its centuries of service, the Consulate has done much to earn the respect and goodwill of the Scottish people. One of these acts came in 1893, when then-Consul Wallace Bruce--as appropriate a name for a diplomat assigned to Scotland as could be imagined--unveiled a figural memorial, located at Calton Cemetery, depicting President Abraham Lincoln granting freedom to an African American slave. This memorial commemorates Scottish-American soldiers who had fought and died in the American Civil War. In addition, nearly a century later, when Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by terrorists while flying over Lockerbie carrying mostly American and British citizens, Consulate staff and officials rushed to the scene and worked for months alongside their Scottish peers to provide support and assist in the investigation in any way they could. The symbolic importance of the Consulate became clear in 1995 when deep budget cuts within the US Department of State resulted in its being slated for closure. After an unexpected outpouring of support from Scots and Americans alike, the Consulate was spared just days before its scheduled closure. It remains today an appendage of the US government in Scotland. It stands as a reminder of the shared histories of the two countries and, like the US Embassy in London, a tangible proclamation of their "special relationship."

Regent Terrace features 34 stately townhouses built between 1826 and 1833 as grand residences along the base of Calton Hill. By the time construction along the terrace was completed, all but one of the townhouses was occupied, and the street largely hosted residential property for over a century. Particularly in the mid-20th Century, however, as newer quarters of Edinburgh became more fashionable, some residences began to be converted to other uses as the central city grew in population and the importance of Calton Hill socially, politically, and historically increased. For example, one house located several doors down from the Consulate, 1 Regent Terrace, served as classrooms for a high school beginning in the early 1960s, and was only converted back into residential use in the early 2010s. The US Consulate, however, remains along this largely residential block, having moved into 3 Regent Terrace in 1951. The decision to locate here has cemented the Consulate and its staff as close to the people, and at the cultural, historical, and political center of Scotland--an exertion of soft power and a symbol of friendship that would be likely be diminished if the US government relocated to a new building, at a new location, far from the life, heart, and heritage of the historic city.

Today, the US Consulate is A-listed by Historic Environment Scotland as "3 Regent Terrace Including Railings and Boundary Walls." As its listed name would suggest, not just the building itself, but its ancillary built features, are considered part of its historic significance.

Because of its listing by the Scottish Government, and its inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage district, the US Government, as owner of 3 Regent Terrace, is obligated to consider preservation of the historic building as it would properties located on American soil. Section 402 of the National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C § 470a-2) requires that

Prior to the approval of any Federal undertaking outside the United States which may directly and adversely affect a property which is on the World Heritage List or on the applicable country's equivalent of the National Register, the head of a Federal agency having direct or indirect jurisdiction over such undertaking shall take into account the effect of the undertaking on such property for purposes of avoiding or mitigating any adverse effects.

Through our partnership with the State Department--the Federal agency having "direct jurisdiction" over 3 Regent Terrace--and through meetings with US Consulate staff currently assigned to the building, the magnitude of preservation's impacts became clear to the students in CRP 391.

3 Regent Terrace and its neighboring townhouses are designed in a strong Neoclassical style, representing Playfair's aesthetic vision and the contemporary planning of Edinburgh's New Town as reflecting the high-class, formal architectural leanings of 19th century Europe. While many along the Terrace were built as 2-story residences, a great number have had another story added, the Consulate among them. The homes feature the trappings of Neoclassical design, with rigidly ordered fenestration, wrought-iron trellis balconies, large sash windows, Doric columns, and other classical details, and an overall grand scale that allows them to simultaneously mesh with the architecture of the broader city while standing confidently on their own. The Consulate is very much a piece of this larger tout ensemble--and again, symbolic of the closeness of the US and Scotland and their respective citizens.

Diplomatic missions around the world, particularly those of the US, have increasingly been the scenes of protests and targets of terrorist attacks. In many cities, embassies and consulates have been relocated from their historic sites in dense, often mixed-use neighborhoods, to more secure and defensible locations. The embassies of London and Oslo represent this trend, as does the consulate in Frankfurt am Main and many others. Edinburgh, despite the presence of traffic bollards at either end of Regent Terrace, retains an openness that many other diplomatic buildings around the world have lost.

Although I appreciated every aspect of the trip, my personal favorite location we visited was the U.S. Consulate building. It goes without saying that even being allowed to tour the building was unexpected, but I was especially impressed with how modern the interior of the building was, despite its actual age. While we were posing for this picture after our tour, one of the security personnel came out the door and with a little goading was happy to join us.

-Lars L., CRP 391 student

Once an independent community outside of Edinburgh, Leith historically has been the capital's working class neighborhood, a port community that remained untouched as New Town planning ideals broadly shaped the city's fabric. In recent years Leith has been "rediscovered" as an affordable alternative to parts of Edinburgh already beyond the reach of modest-income Edinburghers. Leith has gentrified.

Edinburgh, like other European cities, notably London, is fairly littered with memorials, markers, plaques, and informational signs. Some are recent, others nearly as old the historic people, places, and events they commemorate. In their explorations of Edinburgh, CRP 391 students were encouraged to note these memorials, understand their diverse messages, and speculate as to why they were created. To evoke the famous inscription on Wren's tomb: "Reader, if you seek a monument, gaze around."

Among the monuments and memorials of Edinburgh, a particularly contentious one became a topic of discussion upon our return to the US.

Here we are climbing the Acropolis on top of Calton Hill. Lars was the only one tall enough to easily climb up, but Sarah and I needed a boost. So Sonya took a really funny picture of all us working together to make sure we could all get on top of 'Scotland’s greatest disgrace' [as the long-unfinished National Monument of Scotland is locally known].

-Dana M., CRP 391 student

Included here is a sampling of academic articles, "grey literature," works of fiction, and popular essays that students in CRP 391 read before, during, and after their travels to Edinburgh. In no particular order:

• "Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site: Management Plan 2017-2022" (2017) by the City of Edinburgh Council, Historic Environment Scotland, and Edinburgh World Heritage
• "UNESCOCIDE" (2014) by Marco D'Eramo, New Left Review
• Calton Hill and the Plans for Edinburgh's Third New Town (2018) by Kirsten Carter McKee
•  "Edinburgh’s Part in the Slave Trade"  (2018) by Historic Environment Scotland
• Explore Historic Leith: A Guidebook by the Leith History Society (n.d.)
• Leith Through Time (2014) by Jack Gillon & Fraser Parkinson (thanks to Mr. Parkinson, one of our tour guides, for the signed copy!)
• "The Secretary of State's Register of Culturally Significant Property 2019" by the Office of Cultural Heritage, Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, US Department of State
• "Edinburgh by Numbers 2018" by the City of Edinburgh Council
•  "At Edinburgh Festivals, Climate Awareness Comes at a Cost"  by Andrzej Lukowski (New York Times, 8/20/2019)
• "Fairytale Authenticity: Historic City Tourism, Harry Potter, Medievalism and the Magical Gaze" (2019) by Jane Lovell, Journal of Heritage Tourism
• "Rock of Ages: Edinburgh Castle, 1100s" by Alistair Moffat (from Who Built Scotland: A History of the Nation in Twenty-Five Buildings (2018) edited by Smith, Moffat, et al.)
• "The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh" UNESCO World Heritage Nomination (1994)
• A Drama in Time: A Guide to 400 Years of Riddle's Court by Edward Hollis (2018)
• "Learning from Grosvenor Square: Preservation and Remembrance in London’s ‘Little America’" (2021) by Belding and Grevstad-Nordbrock
• Set in Darkness (2000) or Fleshmarket Close (2004), Inspector Rebus novels by Edinburgh crime novelist Ian Rankin (who we saw on the streets of Old Town--serendipity!)
•  "It's Time for our Children to Learn the Truth About Scotland's Role in Slave Trade"  by David Leask (The Herald, 1/17/2021)
• Why Cities Look the Way They Do (2019) by Richard J. Williams
• Patrick Geddes's Intellectual Origins (2020) by Murdo Macdonald
• Various other Historic Environment Scotland and City of Edinburgh Council planing and heritage documents