Anyone at all who has lived, worked or spent any amount of time in Edinburgh will know the closest it has ever come to "slums" were the peripheral housing estates encircling the city.
While major English cities (and even our Weedgie pals in Glasgow) have inner city problem areas, Auld Reekie conveniently tucked its sink estates well out of the way. Miles away from Princes Street, the Castle, the glorious New Town and the annual arts jamboree known as the Festival-Fringe.
A bloody good idea it was too. Niddrie, Craigmillar, Wester Hailes, Muirhouse, Pilton, Sighthill and Broomhouse never suffered from being on the edge of the town.
And Edinburgh's reputation as centre of excellence in terms of both heritage and financial institutions was never compromised by having to live cheek-by-jowl with scuzzy, dreary estates peopled by the unwashed, the unhinged and the plain unlikeable.
No slur intended. I know there a plenty decent, hard-working, honest sorts living there. Indeed, they have to put up with the scumbags on a daily basis.
From my middle class bastion I can spout all this with confidence. I was there, you see. Muirhouse AND Wester Hailes are my Alma Mater. I peed in the stairwells, lipped teachers and old ladies with gay abandon and went on the chorie (shoplifting) in the concrete monstrosities masquerading as shopping centre. I know these places inside out. Or so I thought.
Truth be told I haven't had much reason to be in any of these former ghettoes for, woooohhhh, well ages. Until the past week, actually. So what did I find on my sojourn into my own past? Jeezo! These places are being positively gentrified. Just check out this link to a story that ran in the Edinburgh Evening News (it was the front page splash, no less!):
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1056302007
Not only does this story suggest Wester Hailes is a "boom town", but look at the debate it has provoked among online readers. Bloody hell.
£100k is a serious amount of wedge to pay for a hoose in an area which will attract nothing but pitying glances when anyone from Edinburgh's establishement learns your address (I haven't lived in Wester Hailes since 1988, but at times I'm still made to feel that part of my history is some squalid and shameful burden that leaves me slightly sullied when in polite company).
Wester Hailes has been the subject of a giant-sized makeover project for at least 20 years. In the 80s Labour's city fathers nicknamed the estate "Treasure Island" because of the amount of money poured in, particularly from Europe. Nothing ever seemed to come of that money. But in the 90s the worst of the damp, unpleasant high rises were demolished and replaced with far more attractive hooses.
Then, at the Millenium, the Union canal was rerouted right through the Hailes. That watery feat aside the highligh of the estate's renaissance was probably the opening of a state of the art bingo hall. Point is, it looks much better now than it ever did before. and I hope the people living there have a better quality of life than they did during its 80s low point (17,000 people in an estate - the population equivalent of a town the size of Musselburgh - with one just one, extremely dodgy pub!).
With all these improvements and hooses selling for £100k plus, a place that was once considered one of the worst estates in Scotland hardly qualifies as a slum any more, does it? Which means we Edinburghers instead have to look to to Pilton/West Granton to provide our number one slum.
Except that whole hellhole has been razed and replaced with all sorts of fancy-dan, attractive new modern buildings. Which are also selling like hot cakes. Meanwhile, the same process seems to be taking place just over the road in Muirhouse as well. The flats on Pennywell Road (where I once lived) are currently being demolished. No doubt to make way for yuppie flats.
Er, what about Niddrie and Craigmillar then? Surely nothing can improve them? Actually, desirable new properties (with balconies and fancy advertising slogans) are sprouting up round there faster than fungi in a damp high-rise bedroom. Apparently the area has enjoyed something of a renaissance thanks to the creation of the new Royal Infirmary hospital, with staff (especially nurses) snapping up the attractive-yet-affordable new properties.
Anybody passing through on the way to Fort Kinnaird "retail park" cannae help but notice that all the old blocks have been sealed up in readiness for demoltion - while US sized glossy advertising hoardings at the roadside promise that even more super des-reses are on the way.
It's the same story in Sighthill and Broomhouse as well. Property prices soaring while any new buildings appearing are, well, downright attractive looking. I even ventured into Oxgangs yesterday. It was never as bad as some of the places already mentioned. So I thought it might just be the kind of place that would be going through a downward spiral - the flip side of all these other places being on the up.
But naw! The high rises are gone. All the fevered activity in Oxgangs is in the construction of some very swanky looking new flats - complete with glass, metal and timber frontages and french windows opening onto nice wee gardens. Obviously there are other estates I haven't visited recently. Southhouse, Burdiehouse, Gilmerton, Gracemount, Craigentinny etc. But I strongly suspect the story will be the same in them all. Gentrification on a grand scale.
None of this should worry me. Afterall, we should celebrate the economic and social tsuanmi which appears to have swept through these areas causing untold millions of pounds worth of improvements. Except I do have one, nagging, niggling little concern.
While all the slums have gone, the scumbags most certainly haven't. In fact, we seem to be plagued more than ever by workshy dole cheats, the criminally intent, the morally dubious, the mealy mouthed, the substance addled and the downright feckless.
So my question is this - with nae slums left to speak of, exactly where are the slack-jawed, the white-socked, the mono-eyebrowed, the cheap-bling-encrusted, the shellsuited and the Burberry-behatted living now?
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