01. Lochrin Basin at Fountainbridge
Behind AKVA there used to be coal yards and the two original basins of the Canal.
Barges on the Canal used to transport coal to these yards for the purpose of heating homes. On their way back they would carry human waste.
Nowadays at this place there are the main access point from Fountainbridge road. Unfortunately the high buildings block the view to the area.
Fountainbridge now mainly consists of student buildings, houses for rent and weekend rental. There is a great absence of families and locals.
02. Behind Kennedys Building
Residential complex
The area used to be a former basin owned by a brewery. There are no regulations of how to build, commercial or residential buildings. The decision is made by the people who own the land.
03. Lift bridge
The bridge is not functional at the moment.
There is a rubbish problem because of the low maintenance of the area. The Scottish Canals, who are responsible for the area, receive no funding from The City of the Edinburgh Council.
04. Rope Walk Street
Area with mainly car repair businesses 
There is a development plan for knocking down the enterprises and building house complexes.
Local people don’t like the idea because it will block the private gardens from the buildings behind them and there is no plan of relocation for the existing businesses.
05. Empty lot: The Forge
The site is considered a good place for experimentation and creative development. It is usually used as a metal/wood workshop, in which people create personal work with assistance in order to realize their “dream” projects.
Empty lot is being used for temporary installments (i.e the piano dome/mobile home/ temporary gardens).
06. Canal Maintenance
The Canal needs to be maintained often, mainly because the weeds at the bottom of it can grow so much that the barges can face problems. Although not all the weeds are cut in order to preserve the ecosystem and protect the bird nests.
01. The Boat House
In the 1930s it was widely used by couples, for romantic rows along the Canal.
The boathouse officially closed three years ago, it is a condemned, unsafe building. They were able to secure the funding to keep maintaining it.
The place here has potential since it is in a high density area of the Canal (close to the Harrison Park).
02. Canoe Company
The Canoe Company is very popular to the people and it was the nursery for two gold Olympic medalists. The currently use the area for slalom, canoe polo.
Children train here in all sorts of water sports like canoeing and kayaking.
The Canal at this point is about 1 m deep
03. Polwarth Parish Church
Multi-use room inside the Church property 
Place for memorial garden 
Place for memorial garden
In photos 3 and 4 is the space where Polwarth Church is planning to create a memorial garden. Professor McEwan, who runs the project “Scotland’s War”, wants to dedicate the garden to the doctor who used the canal systems in Belgium in France during WWI, to transport back injured people. The aim is that people who will come here, can think about and reflect on these memories while relaxing.
All the Canals in Edinburgh get the same protection laws as Edinburgh Castle. Anyone who wants to intervene to the banks of the canal has to make sure that there are no protection species or plants.
Canal Shed Community
Canal Shed is a weekly gathering point for people who would like to have contact with each other. The community has been running for a year and they are just registered a a charity organisation. They have an arrangement with the church to use the hall free of charge and in exchange they provide services like maintaining the garden or wood working.
The aim of the community is “bringing people together and tackling social isolation and loneliness” (Anna, Canal Shed As.). People can gather together and ideally use the canal as a resource of leisure, education and pleasure. They have been using the canal for learning about wildlife, heritage and local history. In practice they spend more time indoors during the winter.
They are running a wood working project, in which they are looking at donated timber items of furniture and things they pick up and they refurbish them turning them into new items.
Key feature of the Canal Shed is “skill sharing”.
Canal Shed also cooperates with SCOREScotland and NKS South Asian Women.
01. Intersection: Union Canal, Water of Leith and A70
View from Canal down to Water of Leith 
Path by Water of Leith
The intersection of the Union Canal with the Water of Leith and the A70 road is a very interesting point in terms of construction.
This area in particular is a very uncomfortable point for cyclists and pedestrians while there is no space to circulate and usually cyclists have to get off their bikes to cross along with a pedestrian.
02. Craiglockhart Neighborhood
The Council does not have building restrictions along the Canal, on the contrary the encourage people to engage with the Canal as much as possible.
03. Meggetland Building Complex
This housing development is quite new, it consists of 175 flats in two blocks and it is one of the few areas in this section of the Canal where both residents and pedestrians have easy access to the Canal.
The people around the area were not very happy with the development, since they were built over green area that was meant for sports for the local schools and children.
It has brought a fresh new population of people who now enjoy the Canal for leisure.
01. Calder Road
View from Calder Road to the Union Canal 
Calder Road
There were built 62 bridges for the Canal of which 61 still exist.
Calder Road is a high traffic and high speed road which limits the access to the Canal from that point. There is an ongoing project to rebuild the towpath to give people more space.
02. Control Points for Water Height
The height of the Canal is always very well controlled because of the boats and the bridges. They control it through side canals which draw water from the two big reservoirs.The buildings shown are warehouses
03. Season Clock
Botanical Season Clock 
Paddle Cafe
The Season Clock is a project done by a botanist from the University of Edinburgh and it consists of four small gardens with herbs. It is planted as a clock, so each of the segments are flowering at the different seasons of the year. All of the plants of this attempt can be used at herbal medicine. Unfortunately at the moments it is in a very bad condition
There is a thought of taking the place in front of the Napier University apartments (Viewforth Bridge), and replacing the sculpture with one of those gardens (season clock). The sculpture will be moved up to Craiglockhart Park.
The Paddle Cafe is quite popular specially in the summer. It is an activity center which belongs to the Bridge 8 Hub.
04. Community Gardens
The community gardens were done by the Community College. Canal College was operating for people who left school but couldn’t work for a reason, usually because they were involved in crime, drugs etc. It was a very successful project, a 30% of people found a job afterwards. Unfortunately it lost its funding and it is non operational.
Fruit trees, blackberries, raspberries and general vegetables were planted. They were meant for the people in the housing buildings.
The whole idea with the new housing and the garden was very good but it couldn’t sustain itself. “People who are living here have nothing to do and nowhere to go. They have spent money on small projects and a lot of money for stockhouse itself” (Richard, FCI)
The communal gardens are abandoned because the people who were taking care of them moved on, so there isn’t the same driving force at the moment.
05. House block in Sighthill Area
The houses are part of the Holder Estate which is in the Wester Hailes area. They were all built in the 1960s.
The buildings have undergone multiple repairs because of the bad quality construction they underwent.
Nowadays Edinburgh is expanding and getting bigger, it is growing up to 5.000 people a month and there is a great need for accommodation. Sighthill area is one of the areas considered for future housing development.
06. Swans
The grass in this particular area is suitable for swans because of its consistency. Also the area is quite and attracts swans to nest there.
07. Wester Hailes Neighborhood
Trash problem 
New building complexes
This area was farming land until 1950. At that time the area of AKVA used to be one of the poorest slums in Europe. At one point where they couldn’t do anything about it, they started building satellite areas, Wester Hailed is one of them, to accommodate the people who had to move out of the slums. People were happy about it because of the better conditions they were offered, but the only problem back then was the transportation. it was very far, and there were no good bus services.
In this specific area there is a problem with rubbish and there are no bins along the length of the Canal. The problem with the bins is that Scottish Canals has no resources to employ people to take care of them.
Another problem of the area is that the crime rates are high and its one of the least safe areas in Edinburgh (drugs, robbery, mugging, etc).
The lowest concentration of cyclists and pedestrians can be found here. That is because people in this area cannot afford their own bicycle, and if they were to own one it would probably get stolen.
WATER LOGIC: REGENERATING UNION CANAL 