Evening Times

There have been many false dawns in the long anticipated demise of the St James Centre, a building conceived in those heady days of the 1960s when prefabricated concrete megastructures were all the rage in architecture. Unlike many fashions, changed attitudes to the environment are likely to prevent it ever being repeated and, 35 years on from its completion and with a new owner, it appears this brutalist colossus may finally have had its day. This being the case, the challenge for the city council and the many public agencies concerned with the built environment is to put in place measures that ensure the replacement development is more responsive to central Edinburgh's urban form.