The Scotsman

Might Edinburgh be the most changed city in Europe? In attitude - if not yet in the new architecture it produces - it is unrecognisable from the conservative, fusty place it was not so very many years ago. Then it was legendary for its hostility towards the modern world, boasting what was described as the most "Stalinist" Planning Committee in Britain. But times have changed, and today the convener of the committee will get up and say that Edinburgh is beautiful because it consists of layers of buildings from the past that were all vigorously modern in their time (sometimes radically so - James Craig's New Town Plan being a most significant example), and that we would fail this great city of ours if we did not create a vigorous, modern, Scottish layer of our own. I can't disagree.