In the winter issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple recounts his recent visit to Edinburgh and his unfortunate and jarring encounter with the horrors of modern architecture, as well as the widespread vulgarity on display all around.

Nothing could be more emblematic of the implosion of Scottish (and British) taste than the incapacity of modern architects and government officials to build even a minimally pleasant building on, and appropriate to, the site—in a city whose elegant but simple Georgian architecture is world-renowned.