A spectre, thought happily to have been exorcised from the heart of beautiful Edinburgh, is stalking the city’s old wynds and crevices once more.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was given licence by those entrusted with guarding Edinburgh’s built heritage to embark on a wrecking spree through the heart of the city before finally being driven out. The damage, though, is still sorely evident on Princes Street. As I observed in my report last week, the city’s planners are once more failing wretchedly to heed the lessons of the past.

This really ought to be the most beguiling boulevard in Europe. On its northern side, the Scott Monument sits amid rolling gardens in the shadow of a medieval castle. But when you turn to look at what’s facing it, you encounter a row of low, brick portable buildings, trying forlornly to be a retail thoroughfare. The effect is a curious one, as if a voluptuous society beauty has opened her mouth to smile at you, only to reveal a thin row of rotting teeth.

The shops are housed in buildings flung up during a Modernist blitz in the mid-1960s, which tried to correct the civic vandalism of the Victorian era but only made matters worse. The demolition ball that began to wreck Princes Street finally met human resistance at the eastern end before it could turn the Café Royal into rubble.

Those protesters still living who lay down before the bulldozers are still favoured with the best seats whenever they walk through the doors of this Edinburgh institution. The wrecking spree was halted in its tracks, but not before the unlovely St James Centre shopping mall was flung up in 1973, a concrete excrescence that looms over the eastern approaches and disfigures what ought to be one of the most stunning vistas in Europe.

At long last, work has begun to demolish and replace the St James Centre, which takes Brutalism up a few notches and turns it into barbarism. Depressingly, the numpties and panjandrums who sit on Edinburgh city council have squandered the opportunity to heal the wounds of the past. The office and flat development is not without some merit, but its centrepiece, a vast gold-plated hotel that spins out of the concrete, is like the bastard child of Dr Martens and Christian Louboutin.

What is it with this city, whose custodians, over centuries, seem to be ashamed of having so much natural beauty bestowed upon it and constantly seek ways to diminish it? When you stroll up Leith Walk you are affected by how magnificent this part of Edinburgh might be. There is a confluence of vistas that ought to take your breath away: to the north, the views across the Forth; to the west, the Scott Monument and the terraces of the Old Town, with the Castle. Due east is Calton Hill, which, with its monuments, observatory and neoclassical High School, inspired the name the Athens of the North: at least, that’s where it is if you could see it from here. For the view has been obliterated by yet more office blocks in that concrete and chrome fusion so beloved of the city’s guardians. This part of Edinburgh ought to be magnificent; instead, it is tawdry.

The fate of the Old Royal High School, one of the most important buildings in Britain, is also now at the mercy of the men and women who waved through the St James development. Plans to turn it into another hotel for the elite, complete with two free-standing accommodation blocks, give it the appearance of Mickey Mouse’s head. This school, remember, was built by Thomas Hamilton and is considered to be one of the finest neoclassical Greek buildings constructed in the post-Hellenic period. It is one of the crown jewels of Scotland’s built heritage.

Those who are expressing deep concerns about which way Edinburgh city council will jump are not holding their breath. They cite the fate of St Andrew Square on the east end of George Street, within muffin-throwing distance of the St James Centre, as evidence. Last year, three listed buildings, including fine Victorian and Edwardian abodes, were bulldozed to make way for one of those featureless and sanitised garden projects.

Despite the charging wildebeest approach to civic development that has disfigured Edinburgh’s architectural heritage, there was still enough beauty for the city to be made a Unesco world heritage site in 1995, principally for the splendour of its medieval Old Town and Georgian New Town. Yet, as I reported last week, that honour is under threat following the havoc that’s being wreaked in Edinburgh’s loveliest spaces.

There is a view that holds that these things don’t really matter. This was espoused earlier this year by a chap called Richard Williams, an academic who specialises in a discipline that calls itself “contemporary visual cultures”. Williams described critics of these building developments as “neurotic” and suggested that most tourists visit Edinburgh during its festival for standup comedians rather than architecture.

This academic’s remarks inadvertently demonstrate why Scotland’s built heritage is of great social value to its people. They characterise an elitist and “top down” attitude of the type that says: “The little people don’t really have the wherewithal to appreciate beauty and splendour, so why bother? Let’s give them whizzes and bangs instead.”

People like me, a persistent and envious Glaswegian, do like to attend the comedy shows at the Edinburgh festival, but we wouldn’t pay to watch them if they were in Milton Keynes or Birmingham. What makes Edinburgh beautiful are things that money can’t buy. You don’t even need to know what is medieval and what is Georgian and what is neoclassical Greek to appreciate that you are in the presence of something sacred and beautiful.

Nor was this a casual and random thing, some happy accident of birth. These buildings were bequeathed to this country by its brightest and best, to express their love for Edinburgh and as a free gift for generations to come. Governments can impoverish their citizens by choosing to pander to rich people, but beauty that doesn’t require money to be appreciated ought to be out of their reach, shouldn’t it?