despite the area benefiting from a superficial building regeneration including modern flats, student residences, university of edinburgh sports facilities and being popular area to live in due to its closeness to the centre of edinburgh and its immediate proximity to the scottish parliament, when compared with other residential areas in central edinburgh, it still remains an economically impoverished part of the city, suffering from the associated aspects of social problems such as disproportionately high levels of unemployment along with drug and alcohol abuse.