Rethinking Fountainbridge: Honoring the Past and Greening the Future in an Edinburgh Neighborhood

Join us in Bandelier East 105 on Tuesday November 9th at 5:30pm for a colloquium with Dr.Geoff Buckley of Ohio State. His seminar, Rethinking Fountainbridge: Honoring the Past and Greening the Future in an Edinburgh Neighborhood is free and open to the public. This is an in-person event, but you may attend by registering through this Zoom link HERE. 

Abstract: Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge neighborhood has long been associated with industry. In the nineteenth century, the North British Rubber Company employed thousands of workers to produce a wide range of consumer goods. During the twentieth century, the children and grandchildren of many of these same workers produced boots, gas masks, and other materiel for both civilians and soldiers. Other industries left their imprint on the neighborhood as well, including dairying, meatpacking, and brewing. Since the 1970s, however, Edinburgh has sought to remake itself, eschewing its industrial past in favor of an image more befitting of a “cultural capital.” Nowhere is this more evident than within the boundaries of the city’s world heritage zone. Here, politicians, planners, and architects promote a vision of the city that dovetails with what tourists have come to expect when they visit Scotland’s capital. Outside the boundaries of the world heritage site – in places like Fountainbridge – local authorities are considerably less interested in historical preservation. In recent years the Edinburgh City Council has approved plans to raze entire city blocks of working class tenements and industrial structures, replacing them with office buildings, high-end apartments, and student rentals. Since the economic downturn of the late 2000s, however, local activists have taken advantage of a lull in demolition and construction to campaign for an alternative vision for their neighborhood. Formed in 2011, the Fountainbridge Canalside Initiative has been working with developers and other interested parties, to honor the area’s industrial past, and build a more just, livable, and sustainable community.

Dr. Geoff Buckley is professor of Geography at Ohio University. He holds a Master’s degree from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. His research interests include environmental history and historical geography; environmental justice; mining landscapes; public lands, esp. national parks; urban environments; and urban sustainability. He is the author of five books including, most recently, The American Environment Revisited: Environmental Historical Geographies of the United States (co-edited with Yolonda Youngs, 2018) and North American Odyssey: Historical Geographies for the 21^st Century (co-edited with Craig Colten, 2014).