Perhaps the room illustrated the problem; a modest meeting space in a relatively unremarkable Edinburgh office was the venue this week for the launch of a long-overdue drive to give Edinburgh an ambitious blueprint for the future into which every citizen could buy.

At the headquarters of Cortex, a tech firm launched by former Microsoft high-flyer Peter Proud that handles global brands such as Powerrangers.com, the room was big enough to hold a reasonable audience but too small for the numbers who actually turned up to hear what city council chief executive Andrew Kerr had to say.

Bursting with potential but short on ambition, you could say.

And at the heart of the proposal was a promise that might have taken some by surprise: that the vision for the capital in 2050 Mr Kerr aims to produce through public consultation in less than a year cannot be the property of any one individual or interest, particularly not politicians or political parties.

In a country where nothing is without a political implication, I can’t help but think, “Good luck with that”.

Whether it becomes a talking shop or not, Mr Kerr deserves full marks for giving it a go and it’s not before time. For years Edinburgh has lacked a cohesive plan to meet the challenges of competing in a global market and tackle its problems in doing so. Even if there had been a plan it has not had the leadership necessary to carry it forward.

Mr Kerr has only been in the job a year so blame for lack of grip cannot be laid at his door, and to a great extent his predecessor Sue Bruce was so caught up with fire-fighting one disaster after another rooted in the previous administration that she did not have the chance to look far in to the future.

But where was the political leadership? The Liberal Democrat and Labour-led administrations of the past decade, partnered by a fractious SNP, have been paralysed by crises of the city’s own making.

Taking advantage of what is a political vacuum left by a majority Labour group which, like the rest of the elected party, has had the stuffing kicked out of it, Mr Kerr has stepped into the breach.

With a lame-duck administration limping on until the May elections, he will hope most of the work on the 2050 Vision can be completed and presumably be able to claim a mandate all of its own. “This will fail if it is a council thing, a business thing or any one set of interests,” he said. “It’s got to be about Edinburgh’s people. We have to listen to the people, even if what they want is a giant waterslide,” he added, somewhat worryingly.

“It’s not a council vision, not my vision, but everybody’s vision,” he said. Maybe the slogan will be “Oor vision, your vision, a’body’s vision” and Oor Andy will be pictured sitting on a bucket, having struck a deal with Dundee?

But someone has to take ownership, to balance the competing demands, decide what the vision should be and become its vocal and energetic champion.

Otherwise it risks becoming a wishy-washy compromise that advances very little, sitting on a shelf somewhere alongside all of the other long-forgotten reports, initiatives and good intentions that keep council officers in work.

And we have been here before. In 1998, the energetic Lord Provost Eric Milligan established a Commission on Social Exclusion, designed to harness Edinburgh’s wealth and talent to tackle poverty, inequality and educational disadvantage. Ironically, those were the three priorities highlighted by senior Portobello High School pupils who spoke at this week’s event.

Chaired by Bishop Richard Holloway and drawing from a broad cross-section of people including violent criminal-turned-artist Jimmy Boyle, that commission produced 85 recommendations, one of which was the establishment of a charity, the One City Trust, which still exists today to tackle social exclusion. I doubt many can remember the other 84.

Yet 15 years on, social exclusion remains an issue, so this week we have people such as former St Andrews University Principal Brian Lang, chairman of Edinburgh World Heritage, commenting that the heritage lobby needs to accept that “heritage is for people in Wester Hailes as well as the West End”.

The difference at present is that the competition has heated up, the great corporate behemoths have been either been swallowed, humbled or crumbled and political instability has never been greater.

The days when future prosperity was taken for granted and the only problem was making sure the poor benefitted too are long gone. At least Oor Andy is trying to do something about it.