AVAILABLE FOR ADVANCE PURCHASE AHEAD OF THE NOVEMBER 2026 PUBLICATION DATE

‘The authors challenge the commonly-held assumption that Geddes had little impact in his native land. Rather they promote the alternative view that… ‘conservative surgery’ has played a determining role in guiding the predominant pattern of urban renewal. As such, the book relates a story that has not previously been told. Beautifully and comprehensively illustrated, it is a worthy complement to that earlier classic, The Making of Classical Edinburgh.’

-        Dennis Rodwell, Context Magazine

Edinburgh’s Old Town and its built heritage point up the potential conflict that exists everywhere between the grand schemes of commercial developers and the desire to preserve the character of our towns and cities and support existing communities.

Renewing Old Edinburgh is an account of the history of area renewal in Edinburgh’s Old Town from 1860 to the present. Using their own original research including photographic evidence, the authors explain that the historical experience has in many respects been a protracted struggle between two conflicting approaches to area-based regeneration. One way favours large-scale demolition and comprehensive redevelopment of sizeable cleared sites; the other promotes a more incremental style of renewal which the Scots polymath Patrick Geddes described as ‘conservative surgery’. Geddes’ own contributions in the 1880s and 1890s – and those of the City architects who came after him – are assessed for their continuing relevance.

This new edition takes the story of the Old Town forward to the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. That story is part of a wider narrative of how Edinburgh responded to the international financial crisis and the austerity that followed.  In an Afterword to the original text, Cliff Hague reveals the irony:  the very success of decades of advocacy and local action to save the Old Town made its latent value ripe for exploitation.

THE AUTHORS
Jim Johnson (1933–2025) was a qualified architect with extensive experience in architectural education and urban regeneration practice. He was formerly the Director of the Old Town Committee for Conservation and Renewal, which was subsumed in 1999 under the umbrella of Edinburgh World Heritage. Previously, he was a member of the teaching staff in the Department of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde and was involved in the rehabilitation of Glasgow tenements. Lou Rosenburg is trained in economics and town planning and has a long-standing interest in the historical development of housing policy. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow attached to the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies at Edinburgh College of Art. Before this, he was a member of the teaching staff in the School of Planning and Housing, which is now based at Heriot-Watt University.

AFTERWORD AUTHOR Cliff Hague OBE is Emeritus Professor of Planning and Spatial Development at Heriot-Watt University and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is a Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute and of the Commonwealth Institute of Planners. He was Chair of the Cockburn Association 2016-2023