An Audit of a UNESCO World Heritage site - the Royal Mile, Edinburgh: a preliminary search for authenticity: Three years later (2014)

This report presents the findings of the 2014 audit of the Edinburgh Royal Mile conducted on the anniversary of the first audit, which was conducted between 15th and 21st July 2011. It complements the three previous Royal Mile audits in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and reveals the change relating to non-residential street-facing doorways in the Royal Mile, Edinburgh for each of the years.This is the fifth publication in a series that relates to a study into the concept of authenticity, which started in 2011 and focused upon the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as the case-study. The publication series commenced with an audit of the Royal Mile in 2011 (Harwood & El-Manstrly, 2012a), which was repeated in 2012 (Harwood & El-Manstrly, 2012b), 2013 (Harwood, 2013), 2014 and 2015. However, due to resource issues the latter two audits were not were not published. 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).With this tenth anniversary of the first audit, it has been decided to publish the 2014 audit, but in a more concise form. The original intention was to include a historical perspective as well as a review of Edinburgh’s tourism, though this was prevented for aforementioned resource reasons. Instead, this report presents a brief commentary about the 2014 audit, the table comprising the audit results, as well as a mapping of the Royal Mile for 1914 drawn from the 1914-15 Post Office Directory to enable a 100 year comparison. It also provides a detailed insight into the methodology so that anyone interested in replicating the audit for a chosen location is able to do so. This report also complements the forthcoming sixth and final report which presents the findings from the 2021 audit and offers a comparison with the 2011 audit, thus revealing how the Royal Mile has changed over a ten year period.