Where are Edinburgh's Special Landscape Areas?

Edinburgh is a beautiful city. Large parts of the city fall under various designations to try to protect this heritage. Greener Leith was involved in a consultation on September 10th, held by the planning department, that sought to gather community views on proposals to designate various parts of the city as Special Landscape Areas - or SLA's. 

Despite our best efforts to try to get areas such as the Water of Leith and The Links included as SLA's, there are none in Leith. Indeed, it appears as though very few, if any, changes have been made to the SLA's identified in the presentation that was delivered at the 'consultation,' judging by the responses provided by the planning department to the questions raised. 

Review of Local Landscape Designations, Edinburgh

 We shouldn't worry though, the official response from the planning department reads:

"Landscapes that were evaluated as of lower overall merit...can still be afforded protection by a framework of policies relating to trees and woodland, open space, designed landscapes, nature conservation, green belt and countryside areas, and urban design". 

Comments

[Claire Fletcher]

There seems to be remarkable little protection for urban trees which are part of a city scape rather than a landscape but none the less extremely important. Street trees tend to be small and poorly maintained and too often fall victim to development projects. Several outside the Usher Hall have just been removed and I have been so far unable to find out whether they will be replaced. The tram works have also been extremely bad for trees and will be far worse as they go on. The Edinburgh Council's 'green' policies don't seem to extend to urban trees.

Biophilia rules!

Please e mail Councillors about loss of trees. We all need them.