In this chapter I will explore planning developments in Edinburgh; in the subsequent one, the case of the Edinburgh trams, the ‘big ticket’ development which, though up and running after a fashion since 2014, has been the most controversial development of them all, and still not complete seven years later. Why examine planning developments anyway? It is because systems of power are, by and large, opaque; and often it is difficult to see where power lies. Developments, however, are actions which illuminate power; they shine light on how decisions are made, and who benefits (and loses). In other words, we stand a better chance of seeing more clearly who runs things.

Edinburgh is no stranger to planning controversies, arguably more than most cities, in part because of its historical and architectural features –the council issues a Building Heights and Roofscapes Planning Guidance –but mainly because of pressures to develop in a bounded city with, at least historically, a tight green belt policy. The Abercrombie Plan of 1949 reflected those pressures, which have amplified in the subsequent half-century. We take as our marker the building of the city bypass around the city in the 1980s, which in hindsight has encouraged building up to the city limits, and beyond (see Figure 8.1, page 198).

CITY AS GROWTH MACHINE

Edinburgh is a city with many holes in the ground, none more famous than the opera-house- that- never- was in Castle Terrace until it was filled in by an office block/ theatre (The Traverse) in the 1990s. In previous chapters we have seen how planning and development have driven much of the city's politics, dominated so long by local building and property trades, shaping what the American sociologist Harvey Molotch called, memorably, the ‘growth machine’ (Molotch 1976). The political economy of place seems an apt way of understanding the social, economic and political processes which have shaped the social ecology of the city, underpinning its ecology of power relations. Not that this was unique to Edinburgh; rather, it provides a good example of a place where power and property are intimately connected. By ‘growth machine’, Molotch meant that