Fay Young

Category: The City Talks

  • Be brave Edinburgh, follow Glasgow’s lead

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    Public space for people Sunday lunchtime. The sun is shining, the pan pipes are playing and the waiter is serving sea food and pink wine at the table next to us.  If you shut your eyes you might be in a typical street cafe in a typical European town centre.  And of course that’s where…

  • Rust in pieces on the Water of Leith

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    Thanks to Ray Perman for this guest blog on a bold new proposal for our part of town. And thanks to Aunty P for the picture (taken a little further afield). I like the work of Antony Gormley. I like particularly that his rusting, steel statues – modelled on his own body, although you would…

  • Tescotown – Tescotram?

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    The success of our business depends on listening to people and responding to what they tell us. [Tesco Corporate Social Responsibility] Here’s a shocking revelation in our local community newsletter.  Shocking but probably not surprising.   Tesco  will not be paying a penny towards the construction of Edinburgh’s tram route although it is perfectly – and…

  • Broughton awaits Tesco Express

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    Welcome to Broughton Street, open for business despite the tramworks. It’s the place to come whether you want a leisurely meal or a quick coffee, whether you are looking for upmarket sausages or  good wines, second hand books or frilly knickers, organic  fruit, vegetables or ( ahem) erotica.  On a wet March morning there is …

  • Sheer poetry in St Andrew Square

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    I set off for the launch of the poetry garden this morning with two boxes full of lotus flowers and a big tartan umbrella. Which was just as well because by the time I reached St Andrew Square it was pelting with rain and blowing a gale. Even so I walked home with a warm…

  • Poetry and politics in the city

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    It has happened. Thanks to a great group of people led by Ewan, a fantasy lurking at the back of my mind has made it into real life. Yesterday in the Scottish Poetry Library, a treasure of a place tucked out of sight down a close in the Royal Mile, a cluster of literary souls…

  • Monumental achievement

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    A bit shaky, but for goodness sake, we’re looking down on the big wheel on Princes Street. I have no head for heights but last week I got a real kick out of climbing the 192 steps of that spindly monument in the middle of St Andrew Square to look down on the building site…

  • Car-worn Edinburgh

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    Oh come on Edinburgh, we can do much better than this. Here’s a series of pictures taken on my mobile on a wet, unwelcoming Saturday in the middle of the world’s biggest arts jamboree. Elsewhere the festival goes on but in the middle of what is supposed to be the city’s first pedestrian space, the…

  • Preparing for The FEAST

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    I am just wondering how to write about last night’s event when I discover Rob has beaten me to it. He must have been up a lot earlier than me today because he has already posted pictures and words about a sampling session at Out of the Blue in the Old Drill Hall capturing the…

  • Life between the lines

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    …I became aware that the camera did not see space, it saw surfaces. The camera sees geometrically – we must see psychologically. I like David Hockney’s words. Although they are taken from the book that goes with his Year in Yorkshire paintings, they express the way I feel we should be looking at the design…

  • Beijing’s Early Birds

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    “If you don’t come out in the morning to wake up, how will you be alive? What kind of life is that?” Caroline Cooper’s postcard from Beijing Overgrown with towering skyscrapers and wide-lane boulevards, Beijing’s quiet street life and old hutong homes are under threat. Preparations for the 2008 Olympics are at the forefront of…

  • City Talks

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    From October 2003 to June 2008 I was a non-executive director  of Edinburgh City Centre Management Company (ECCM). During that time I became fascinated by the intangible qualities that make cities tick and had great fun editing a slightly quirky newsletter about culture, commerce and the importance of public space. Meanwhile ECCM has morphed into…