An Audit of a UNESCO World Heritage site - the Royal Mile, Edinburgh: a preliminary search for authenticity: Two Years Later

This report is the fourth publication in a series on an on-going study into the concept of authenticity, which uses the Royal Mile as the case-study. The aim of this report is to provide an update to two previous Royal Mile audits in 2011 and 2012 and reveal changes, in particular, those related to non-residential street-facing doorways in the Royal Mile since the previous audit a year ago. The audit is conducted on the anniversary of the first audit, which was conducted between 15th and 21st July 2011.

Like the previous reports, it is predominantly a visual record of the street, with this report presenting 285 photographs. In addition to change, this report provides material that explores several themes that emerged as interesting during the study (e.g. kiltmakers, police boxes and graffiti). It also provides a visual insight into the 76 closes that characterise the Royal Mile as well as views from the Royal Mile down the numerous streets that run off the Royal Mile.

The report is completed with an Appendix that updates the previous Appendices for 2011 and 2012 and provides details about non-residential street-facing doorways in the Royal Mile. This is based upon data from the Scottish Assessors Association (SAA) Valuation Roll, downloaded on the 15th July. The street was walked between the 15th and 17th July to record changes in the street. Over 1,500 photos were taken over the period 15th July to the 26th July, from which were selected the collection presented. These are presented in relatively low resolution to enable the production of a Word document, whilst the finer detail is preserved in the original prints. This report is one of a series which commenced with an audit of the Royal Mile in 2011 (Harwood & El-Manstrly,2012a), repeated in 2012 (Harwood & El-Manstrly, 2012b) and now this year. Details about this study are presented in the first report “An Audit of a UNESCO World Heritage site - the Royal Mile, Edinburgh: a preliminary search for authenticity” (Harwood & El-Manstrly, 2012a). As stated in the first publication, “the overall aim of the study is to attempt to understand the multi-faceted nature of authenticity and establish whether and how the concept of authenticity can be used by businesses and policy makers” (Harwood & El-Manstrly, 2012a). Complementing the audits is a working paper, which provides a scholarly grounded conceptualisation of the Royal Mile through the lens of authenticity (Harwood & El-Manstrly, 2012c).