Living Laboratory : Edinburgh's 'Festival City', Urban World Heritage, and Global Climate Change

UNESCO World Heritage (WH) cities face a complex paradox. They must preserve their heritage authenticity whilst continuing to evolve as living urban centres, adapting to the causes and effects of Global Climate Change (GCC).

To address this deadlock, this research will examine Edinburgh's annual festivals as dynamic counterpoints to the established heritage identity of the geographically sympatric 'Old and New Towns of Edinburgh' WH site. The Festival City will be deployed as a flexible framework to uncover the potential of the Edinburgh WH site as a 'living laboratory' tackling GCC concerns and envisioning the dynamically sustainable historic city of tomorrow.

In a world undergoing rapid cultural and environmental changes, this research will investigate how Edinburgh's annual Festivals can play an active role in the future sustainability of Edinburgh's urban UNESCO World Heritage (WH) site.

Through interdisciplinary analysis and architectural production methods, this research will pursue three principal lines of enquiry:

1. What is the architectural legacy of Edinburgh's festivals to date, in terms of tangible interventions, urban sustainability and community involvement?

2. What are the greatest concerns related to Global Climate Change (GCC) in Edinburgh, which might be addressed through experimental and reversible architectural and urban interventions (e.g.: reduced carbon footprints, mitigating urban strategies)?

3. How can Edinburgh's annual festivals act as a dynamic vehicle enhancing urban sustainability, whilst engaging with the historical depth and character of the Edinburgh WH site through the evolving lens of WH 'authenticity'?

Urban UNESCO World Heritage (WH) sites are theoretical ecosystems designed to preserve specific heritage values ('Outstanding Universal Value', or OUV) in perpetuity. Global Climate Change (GCC) poses fundamental challenges to this ambition, as it calls for mitigation, agility and evolution. In the case of the Edinburgh WH site, Edinburgh's August festivals provide an important temporal and creative counterpoint to the seeming clarity and stability of the city's UNESCO-endorsed heritage value.

Just as it has been argued that "festivals as critical creative practice should be aiming to trouble, tease or tamper with, rather than perpetuate the status quo" (Perry et al 2020), they hold a living mirror to the city, an ever shifting reflection which can be reinvented afresh every year. Such festivals carry the potential to contribute in an experimental and reversible manner to the evolution of WH cities, taking into account the importance of the place's OUV.

At the heart of Edinburgh, though "the physical structure of heritage buildings cannot be altered", "associations, perceptions and interpretations can easily be explored through the arts" (Smith et al 2006).

In an age of growing uncertainty, this research bridges the conceptual divide between Edinburgh's heritage and its creativity at varying scales of time and space, addressing the "dearth of research on the impact of festivals and other cultural activities [...] to build new urban narratives to underpin sustainable and just cities" (Perry et al 2020).

This research will employ the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a lens through which GCC concerns and impacts are evaluated and addressed, while building on a growing body of research into the potential of temporary urban interventions and 'mega-events' as vehicles for critical conservation approaches and sustainable development in urban areas (Gravari-Barbas 2007; Ikeda 2022; Jones 2022). Research outputs will be structured around interweaving themes relating to community, policy and dynamic architectural intervention within the theoretical and physical boundaries of Edinburgh's urban WH site, to - in turn - help to address the evolving impacts of Global Climate Change.