[URBAN NOTE] "How Glasgow's derelict land is limiting the city's ability to flourish"

[rfmcdonald]

At Scottish site CommonSpace, Paul Sweeney writes about the surprising abundance of derelict land in the Scottish city of Glasgow, consequence of--most notably--poor post-war urban planning.

Glasgow is now only one of two cities in the western world – the other being Detroit – to have the ignominious title of being a former 'million city', which means a city that once achieved a population of over one million but has since declined below that threshold again.

The large-scale depopulation of the city over the last half century means that over 60 per cent of Glasgow’s population now lives within 500 metres of derelict land, and over 92 per cent live within 1,000 metres of a derelict land, with most of these sites situated within the city’s most deprived communities.

For example, 10 per cent of North East Glasgow consists of derelict land, relative to a mere 0.5 per cent in the adjacent suburban area of East Dunbartonshire.

This situation persists because the comprehensive manner in which the city was damaged in the decades after the Second World War has not been matched by anywhere near the scale of resources and intervention required to repair the huge damage wrought upon its urban fabric by that pernicious process.

Many districts of Glasgow have now become little more than areas of managed decline. In these areas the built fabric is so poor that in assessing priorities for urban planning, particularly in the context of limited resources, many planners simply consider it more appropriate to invest in areas already showing potential to be successful – such as in the Gorbals, in contrast to areas that are not deemed to hold that potential, such as Springburn, where the population is forecast to continue declining despite a city-wide increase.