Disclosure first: I help run a property factor here in Edinburgh, so weigh the bias.
This isn't a moan about the council. Opposite, really. I keep clocking how much of the ordinary upkeep of this city is quietly done by people who were never asked and never paid, and I don't think get enough credit.
Over in Merchiston, a volunteer group has been clearing leaves off the pavements every autumn since 2021, close to a 1000 bags a year. That's 1000 bags of wet leaves not sitting on a slope waiting for someone to go down hard on them.
In Balerno, and a growing list of other streets, whole neighbourhoods have started weeding their own kerbs by hand rather than wait for the spray.
There are something like 85 Friends of park groups across the city, thousands of volunteers, out with black bags and secateurs keeping the parks somewhere you'd actually want to sit. And round Lady Nairne, folk spent five years campaigning to get their bus back, the 69, mostly for older and disabled neighbours who'd been left stranded.
To be fair to the council, because it's easy not to be: they do back a lot of this. They lend out the brushes, shovels and weed scrapers, they'll uplift the bags you fill, and they run a whole volunteer setup for the parks. So it's less a story about them dropping the ball and more that a big chunk of the city now runs on this quiet mutual effort, and they've leaned into it rather than fought it.
I just think the people doing it deserve their flowers. Nobody sends an invoice for a swept path. Somebody sweeps it anyway.
So who's the unsung one in your bit of Edinburgh? The neighbour who does the stair, the person who adopted the scrappy bit of green by the bus stop, the group that keeps your park right? Name them, I'd genuinely like to hear it.
