Rising above the polite Georgian terrace of Edinburgh’s New Town is a cluster of eight white tower cranes densely packed into a site where York Place and Leith Street converge. These cranes mark the redevelopment of the St James shopping centre, a tired and unloved brutalist relic of the early 1970s that is being replaced by a mixed-use scheme intended to revitalise this end of the city.

Developer Nuveen is investing more than £1bn into the new scheme, which has been christened Edinburgh St James. The gargantuan development will include 850,000ft2 of retail – equivalent to 21% of Edinburgh’s entire retail offer – as well as 152 apartments, a 244-room, 13-storey W hotel and a 75-room aparthotel. Controversially for a city-centre location with good public transport links, it will include three levels of basement parking for 1,500 cars, three times as many spaces as the scheme it is replacing.

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