Edinburgh
City · 530,680 residents
64Good
Good · among the highest-scoring cities
Check Local Score out of 100 · 60 is typical for the country
Each arc is a topic, coloured by its score
What’s good
- 2,279 places to eat and drink
Check before you view
- Radon: part of the area is in an affected zone, and a home test is cheap
- Road noise reaches 57% of the area
- Transport scores 31, below the typical 60
The essentials
Everyday life
The area
Around Edinburgh
QueensferryDavidson's Mains51Craigentinny60Broomhouse52Saughton52Southhouse51Abbeyhill66Gorgie54Newcraighall66Fountainbridge66Tollcross63Alnwickhill53
See all 68 in the guide ↓Map outline: Council boundary
Is Edinburgh a good place to live?
Edinburgh scores 64/100 overall, which the scorecard rates as good — 60 is typical for the country.
It stands out for food & drink (75).
It scores lowest on transport (31).
Scores come from official data on safety, schools, transport, prices, health, food & drink and the local environment, for Edinburgh in Scotland, each measured against the national average.
Summary of Edinburgh
Tenements and sandstone terraces dominate the skyline here, that particular Edinburgh grey that goes gold when the light's right, and the streets carry a mix of students, civil servants, and families who've stayed put for a generation. It's a capital city that doesn't sprawl so much as stack — flats over shops over basement flats — and you feel that density the moment you're looking for parking.
The population sits a little more tightly packed than the Scottish average, though not dramatically so, and the median age of 37 skews younger than the national figure of nearly 43 — a city with proportionally more people in their twenties and thirties than the country as a whole, which tracks with the student population and the graduate jobs that keep people here after they finish. With 117 schools across the city, families have real choice, though the placing of any one address relative to the better-performing schools matters more here than the citywide count suggests. Housing leans toward flats over houses as a rule in the centre and inner suburbs, and a median price around £296,000 sits comfortably below what you'd pay in equivalent-sized English cities, which is part of why Edinburgh's affordability keeps surprising people who move up from the south.
The green space numbers are the quiet giveaway here — over 3,100 hectares split across more than 950 sites, which is a lot of city given over to hills, meadows, and old volcanic parkland. That's not incidental; it shapes the rhythm of the place, with Arthur's Seat and the Meadows doing a lot of unpaid psychological work for residents who'd otherwise be stuck in tenement stairwells. The nightlife grade sits at the top of the scale, which matches the reputation — this is a city that empties into pubs and small venues without much effort, Old Town and New Town both dense with places to eat and drink. Connectivity is strong too, with full fibre reaching the vast majority of the city, so working from a flat here is rarely the problem; finding room for a desk might be.