Politics of Edinburgh

[minionofmidas]

Is that a Green ward in Leith in 1999? Is yellow/orange LD or SNP or are they two different colors? Also, what's that area at the far northwest of the city and why was it included in the city limits at all?

[minionofmidas]

Ah right, heard that name. Still weird to include it in the city.

Could have thought of that re color scheme. (slaps head)

[minionofmidas]

Is the roughly horizontal boundary between the red and blue areas downtown Princes Street? (Or somewhere in the Gardens, which would come to the same thing?)

I took it to be the railway line. Anyways, yeah that's definitely the boundary between Old Town and (macro) New Town. The fairly large red ward west of the one Al's asking about is that sizable because of Holyrood / Arthur's Seat in it.

[minionofmidas]

Public transport in Edinburgh as pre-tram was far too depressing to be even called a bad joke. Same goes for Dublin - it probably was the worst in Western Europe.
A tram is cheaper - and a lot less disruptive - to build than a subway (though they might have gone for tunnelling under the Old Town's hill, running the same trains as a tram elsewhere in the city. But then you'd've had subway entrances on the High Street.) They're slower, too, of course, but as you point out Edinburgh is dense enough to be almost walkable anyways.
Now, maybe they planned a few lines too few. But you can always add more later on. (And yeah, just looking at the map, the southeast looks like the place the next line ought to be built after that. Not sure how necessary a more northerly parallel line is - certainly makes sense on the map, but I'm not sure if there's enough people who actually want to travel that way?)

[minionofmidas]

The first of the professional/economic maps

Hm, so who lives in the Old Town now? Student slum? It's not the proletariat anymore as until 40 years ago or so (as see also the English-born map ) but it seems not as solidly boboified (why is French the only language with a decent word for it?) as I would have assumed, either.

[minionofmidas]

Btw, what's up with the relatively bourgeouis, and certainly Tory voting in 99 and 03, ward in the western half of what once used to be West Leith ward. Leith has its own ancient middle class west side - it was once a burgh in its own right after all - , or is that dockland-style hardcore gentrification?

[minionofmidas]

And the guy who won in 1945 also ran in 1935. I don't think there was a boundary change during the period?

I know there's a smallish council estate right southwest of Holyrood Castle (and southeast of the new Parliament) that was built on top of a razed early 19th century slum, and initially tenanted by the very same people that had been living in the slum (presumably it was built in stages?) I think that was in the 1950s, though.