I read Libby Brooks’s article (‘Left to rot’: Glasgow’s crumbling heritage comes into focus for 850th anniversary, 2 January) on the bus home from Glasgow city centre, and there was depressingly little in its summary of Glasgow’s architectural woes that I could disagree with.
However, Glasgow’s problem with its built environment isn’t short-term: it is a city that lost almost half of its population over a five-decade period from 1951 onwards, with a city centre footprint (including a stock of wonderful Victorian buildings) that is disproportionately large when compared with the size of its economy. Merging the Greater Glasgow councils might help the boundary issue identified in the article, but wouldn’t address the fundamental funding problem.
This is that if Glasgow’s stock of Victorian buildings is to be sustainable, the city needs an economy big enough to support them. As your report illustrates, the “buildings at risk” figures suggest that the reverse appears to be the case. What is needed to address this is the collective will on the part of the UK and Scottish governments, the city council, businesses and the people of Glasgow, to address the long-term economic problems that the city and its hinterland has, and not to take refuge in the short-term planning traps (such as granting planning consent to out-of-town shopping centres) that the city council has historically fallen into.
The city itself needs to believe that what it has is an asset that can help to support the city’s economy, rather than a liability. This belief sometimes seems to be lacking.
Richard Owen
Glasgow
Your informative article on Glasgow makes for depressing reading. As an architect, I believe I contributed to Glasgow, studied at Glasgow School of Art and watched its demise from close at hand. Council politics have long been an issue with the city but the current Scottish Nationalist council has shown a new low. Whining on about budget restrictions will not cut it. The real issue is a lack of competence and ambition. Citizens deserve better. Local politicians do not have the ability to improve environments. It is time for professionals to take control.
Douglas Anderson
Glasgow