Regeneration and Degeneration In Edinburgh
What is at stake in Dumbiedykes and why it matters to the rest of the city.
The recent disruption at Heathrow Airport that a relatively small fire at a power plant can cause has once again shone a light on the crumbling state of infrastructure in the UK. It seems like every month there is another story about the problems on the rail network (one of the most expensive rail systems in the world btw), the aging electricity grid (see Heathrow), problems with water supply, etc etc. In Edinburgh, like most other towns and cities, there is a huge problem with potholes. Travel (if you dare) beyond the city centre or main roads and the problems only escalate. These failings extend beyond the vital infrastructure mentioned above. What about the near catastrophic state of social infrastructure in Edinburgh?
Social infrastructure is the physical places where people gather in their local community to meet, to talk, to be social beings. Places that enable and shape how we interact with each other. For sure there are different kinds of social infrastructure. For example the local cricket club or tennis club is social infrastructure. But it is of a certain, self selecting, type. People who have a shared interest in cricket or tennis, or perhaps identify a networking opportunity with similar types of people will be drawn to these particular spaces. But not others. If we think about working class areas of Edinburgh the distinction between the private, often exclusive type of social infrastructure and, for example, a public library or a community centre, becomes important.
In working class areas of the city, particularly housing schemes, but not exclusively so, the social infrastructure is in a state of near collapse. After decades of underinvestment, poor maintenance, cuts to services and support, and a neoliberal Council strategy to turn public space into private space, we are very nearly at the end of the line. Where social infrastructure exists, and is invested in and maintained effectively, it improves the lives of residents in various important ways. It allows people to collaborate, create and share. It develops social networks and builds solidarity. Where it doesn’t exist, or is not invested in or maintained effectively, it creates barriers between people and leaves many people socially isolated. The loss of these communal spaces and, crucially, the support and services that flow from them, will have huge, negative consequences for citizens.
Let me give you a concrete example. Dumbiedykes, the area where I live, and Edinburgh’s only inner city housing scheme. In Walter Scott’s 1818 novel Heart of Midlothian there is a character named Dumbiedykes. His deathbed scene is one of the most humorous Scott wrote. In Scott’s notes on the novel he explains that the name “is really the name of a house bordering King’s Park, so called because the late Mr Braidwood, an instructor of the deaf and dumb, resided there with his pupils.” Braidwood is the name of Dumbiedykes community centre in a nod to the past. The housing scheme’s name and spelling a nod to Scott and fiction. In 2025 Dumbiedykes has no social infrastructure left. But a statue of Scott’s fictional Dumbiedykes is on the Scott Monument. Don’t you love the tartan Disneyland that is Edinburgh?
Only a few short years ago Dumbiedykes had a community centre, where various services and activities were based. All managed by residents on a voluntary basis. There were two community flats in the middle of the scheme that residents could use for meetings or small group activities. There was also a training centre. Where people got basic computer skills or could access advice and support and where young people could get help with homework or other needs. All now inaccessible to residents.
The community centre is currently home to Canongate Youth, who had to be rehoused after Edinburgh Council gave the South Bridge Resource Centre to the Fringe Society for £1 on a 100 years lease. Yes, a historic building and surrounding land worth tens of millions of pounds given away for £1 for 100 years. This meant all the services and support based in the South Bridge was either lost to the area or lost altogether. The Council had previously given away St Ann’s Community Centre in the Cowgate (to Edinburgh University and the NHS in another sweetheart property deal) so Canongate Youth was moved into Dumbiedykes community centre. Which is obviously a better outcome than it being lost. Canongate Youth, who are blameless in all this, are meant to return to South Bridge after it is renovated but no date has been fixed for their return.
The two community flats have been given to charities. Which, of course, is not the same as being community flats. No matter how much the Council try and convince us that black is white. Giving public buildings to charities is to turn them into private buildings. Which the public can only access through these external, private organisations. Normally at a cost. It is the neoliberal bridgehead between public space and private space. Let us not forget the Fringe Society and Edinburgh University are both charities. Some fictions must be maintained.
The Dumbiedykes Training Centre has been transferred to Edinburgh Council’s Asset Management Team and sits empty. Why this is the case nobody seems to know. But it is, nonetheless, inaccessible to residents. But what about outdoor space? Because social infrastructure includes community gardens and other well designed outdoor spaces which encourage people to linger, to mix, to meet other residenst. Dumbiedykes doesn’t have any of that. I should point out there is a lovely community garden which sits in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. But it is only accessible through the community centre. So, see above. It is inaccessible to residents.
Dumbiedykes has no shops, no churches, no pubs, no schools, no meeting places. The streets are mostly empty. (There are no through roads in Dumbiedykes. Nobody ‘passes through’ to get somewhere else.) Social spaces, both buildings and outdoors, where people interact with other people, to gather, to talk, to get to know their neighbours, to share gossip or a problem, are now memories. They exist as an absence. The housing scheme itself seems to exist out of place and out of time. Land value rises at the speed of the student accommodation that now surrounds us. Shiny, new, soulless buildings taking their place in the area with the various Edinburgh University buildings, BBC, Rockstar, Citi Group, and more. Changes happening all around us. Beyond, just beyond, the invisible wall separating Dumbiedykes from progress, from our Old Town hinterland. External regeneration, internal degeneration.
People might think this is a sad story but a one off. That it is an unfortunate glitch in the system. They would be wrong. This is the future. In the coming months and years the social infrastructure in other areas of Edinburgh will continue to be attacked. Community centres, public libraries, museums, galleries, green spaces, and any other space they can get their hands on will be closed or colonised by middle class missionaries/developers. The social cleansing of the Old Town should have been a warning. Instead it was the blueprint. The same will be the case with cuts to social infrastructure.
Working class communities need to organise ourselves in defence of social infrastructure and services that matter to us. In Dumbiedykes residents have established a residents led process. This involves resident only meetings so people can come together to discuss issues and establish priorities in a collective, consensus building environment. Without outside interference or impediment. For too long working class citizens have had our views mediated, and manipulated, by others. We need to organise ourselves and a start is listening to each other. The residents only meetings have upset a lot of professionals. Which is clarifying for residents. Anyone upset by working class people meeting to organise ourselves is on the wrong side. Even if they wear a keffiyeh or can quote Marx.
Defence of social infrastructure is only the first step. These communal spaces only provide a platform for the sort of transformational work we need to see in out areas. No longer can outsiders (normally funded by the state) be allowed to set parameters on our discussions or our ambitions. We need to think creatively, be ambitious and have confidence in each other and the power of collective action.
This must also involve a rejection of a failed poverty industry model which sees vital funds intended for working class areas being diverted into salaries for middle class missionaries. We need to make sure essential resources, intended for our areas, gets used in our areas. There needs to be an emphasis on being smarter with what resources are available instead of defending the status quo funding led model of failed projects and bad practice. There should be an audit of all publicly funded organisations in our areas. Transparency and accountability is the least we deserve. If after independent evaluations positive outcomes are identified we should applaud them. Why is the poverty industry so afraid of scrutiny?
If you walk up the back of Dumbiedykes there is still remnants of the old slum tenements which were demolished and replaced with the current housing scheme. You have to look carefully to see the old stonework. It is abandoned, considered not even worthy of being demolished properly. There is nothing nostalgic about considering the lives of those who built those tenements (or the scheme that replaced them) or the trying to guess how many families have lived in them over the generations and what their lives in this area were like. But we all need to learn something from their struggles. What does Edinburgh Council think the social consequences will be when they continue to erode our social infrastructure? To disrespect, to ignore and exclude, working class citizens? Do they care about the damage they are doing to the city’s social fabric?
Edinburgh makes a great show of loving history. But only a very narrow, conservative version of history. The sort that can be ‘sold’ to tourists or exploited by developers. The city Council is currently spending a fortune celebrating the 900th anniversary of becoming a royal burgh. Dumbiedykes didn’t get a mention. Edinburgh’s working class are damned to be mute. It is said places can exist out of history. It is also the case that history can at times fold over itself. One of the most common complaints in our areas is that the political class do not listen to working class citizens. The ghost of Braidwood and his ‘deaf and dumb’ children still haunt us. But so does Walter Scott’s novel. In Heart of Midlothian people mock the landlord Dumbiedykes behind his back. Calling him ‘Damn-na-dikes’.
Damn-na-dikes, indeed.
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