Conclusion: beyond the post-industrial: narratives of time and place

This chapter examines the extent to, and ways in, which Glasgow is moving beyond characterisation as a post-industrial city. To achieve this the chapter first re-examines the term ‘post-industrial’ and then moves on to consider where cities like Glasgow fit with key debates within the urban studies field. The chapter then turns to consider two analytical approaches to engage with the question of whether a city can still be characterised as post-industrial. Here we foreground how an analytically-informed urban biography can open up a discussion on the particularities of place and time. We then conclude the chapter with some overarching themes that have resulted from the use of place and time as analytical categories. These themes, we argue, are central to an examination of whether cities are moving beyond being characterised as post-industrial.

What once was old is new again: placemaking and transformational regeneration in Glasgow

This chapter considers the evolving urban form of residential architecture and urban design in Glasgow. It traces the history of the Victorian tenement, the city’s failed modernist redevelopment, and the subsequent emergence of a place-making agenda that has reimagined the tenement for contemporary living. The chapter uses interviews with key informants and a review of archival data to describe the city’s approach to contemporary placemaking at two major urban regeneration projects, Laurieston and Pollokshaws. The chapter argues that both projects attempt to ‘recreate’ lost parts of the Victorian city and erase the city’s experience with modernism, while also mixing social housing with market housing to encourage more complete communities. The paper argues that this approach has led to a creeping reliance on the viability of market housing to deliver social housing and the wider regeneration aims of the project masterplans.

The new political economy of city-regionalism: renewed steps in Glasgow

The resurgence of city-regionalism has been a dominant theme in sub-national policymaking over the last decade. Underpinned by narratives of growth engines waiting to be unlocked through greater local control coupled with targeted interventions, city-regions are now a privileged spatial arena in the UK for seeking economic development agreements with higher orders of government. This chapter brings into focus Glasgow’s experience of city-regionalism and notably the re-emphasis brought about by the City Deal. In doing this, multiple political tensions hinging on a series of local, national and UK-wide relationships are sketched out. The chapter - in referencing the wider city-region literature and taking cognisance of the local post-industrial trajectory - poses a series of considerations concerning how and in what form city-regionalism may evolve in Glasgow.

Living in the urban renaissance? Opportunity and challenge for 21st-century Glasgow

This chapter explores the rebirth of post-industrial Glasgow as a desirable urban centre, which has undergone a radical change in reputation and profile within a relatively short period. Successful urban boosterist strategies have left the imprint of event- and culture-led regeneration clearly legible on the urban fabric and we review city centre revitalisation, safety and neighbourhood change as factors in an apparently growing appetite for urban living. However, the urban environment is shaped by a combination of strategic planning, national and supranational economic forces. Asking who benefits, as Glasgow grapples with the challenge of economic transition, requires consideration of these wider drivers, including tenure structures, demographic shifts and the decentralisation of poverty. Along with Glasgow’s successes, the vulnerabilities of a consumption-based economy and a relatively elite-orientated development strategy mean that the challenge of how the city will support and protect its most vulnerable citizens remains.

Stopped in its tracks? Transport’s contribution to Glasgow’s development

Glasgow is a city of multiple transport contradictions. It has some of the lowest levels of car ownership in the UK, but has the most extensive urban motorway network and high car usage and congestion. It has the only underground railway of any age never to have been extended. Governance arrangements for transport have changed frequently, and have failed to deliver the kind of improvements taken for granted in peer cities. Can the city break out of this pattern and deliver the kind of transport it needs in 21 century context dominated by concerns over climate change and social inclusion as well as economic growth?

Changing places and evolving activism: communities in post-industrial Glasgow

This chapter explores the interactions between the changing nature of Glasgow and contemporary community activism. Utilising three case studies of community activism in very different neighbourhoods, we investigate the ways in which differences in community history and capacity, as well as relations with the local state, shape forms of activism. Examining local activism in this way helps to understand and explain the boundaries and nature of communities within the city, and provides insights into complex processes of deindustrialisation and urban change, which have transformed Glasgow in recent decades. Whilst there are changes emerging from rapid demographic shifts in some areas and the growth of online activism, the wider picture is one of evolving continuity, as Glasgow’s long history of community activism persists into the 21st century.

Revisiting the creative city: culture and regeneration in post-industrial Glasgow

Responding to calls for the real, rather than rhetorical, ‘creative city’, this chapter revisits cultural regeneration in Glasgow during the post-industrial period when Glasgow was vaunted as an exemplar of how culture could reorientate the economy and identity of a city. Taking as its point of departure the typology of culture and regeneration put forward by Evans and Shaw in their comprehensive review of the evidence relating to The Contribution of Culture to Regeneration in the UK (2004): culture-led regeneration; cultural regeneration; and, culture and regeneration, it draws on specific examples to complicate these narratives and posit that a reconceptualization of the ‘creative city’ during the post-industrial era is necessary to fully understand the ‘post-creative’ city which, Malcolm Miles (2103) suggests, might arise from new alliances between art work and everyday cultures.

A place for urban conservation? The changing values of Glasgow’s built heritage

City strategies to remake places positioned at their core an improvement of the built environment. In turn, this necessitated a series of re-evaluations as to what future role the existing historic environment could play in urban redevelopment initiatives. The chapter examines three major trends in the use of historic buildings as part of urban redevelopment initiatives in Glasgow. Firstly, the ways in which the perceived benefits of restoring the historic environment grew to a point whereby heritage is now almost seen as a panacea for urban ills. Secondly, the chapter explores the shift in the ways in which urban conservation was managed between 1980-2018. Thirdly, and finally, the ways in which different sources of funding for restoring historic buildings became available over this period is examined.

Introduction: transforming post‑industrial Glasgow – moving beyond the epic and the toxic

This chapter examines Glasgow’s successful 21st century transformation from an industrial city and discusses the insecurities and contradictions that challenge this positive story of regeneration. It highlights why Glasgow makes such a good case study of a post-industrial city, by discussing its recent history using a framing that draws out the city’s ‘epic’ and ‘toxic’ dimensions, during which both the private market and state-led planning failed so spectacularly, leading to a city that was decaying, with more acute economic and environmental problems than any other British city. The chapter then considers the theory of post-industrialism as it was developed in the 1970s and the archetypical characteristics of a post-industrial city, to pose the question: what lies beyond that transitional status?

The policy discourses that shaped the ‘transformation’ of Glasgow in the later 20th century: ‘overspill’, ‘redeployment’ and the ‘culture of enterprise’

This chapter draws on extensive research in government archives to show how Glasgow was affected by a highly discriminatory policy agenda developed within Scotland from the early 1960s. From that time, Glasgow’s industrial decline was actively embraced and accelerated by Scottish Office policy makers as part of a regional economic policy agenda seeking ‘development and growth’ in other parts of Scotland. This agenda, which was sustained for decades, is discussed here as an evolving set of policy discourses – of ‘overspill’, ‘redeployment’ and of ‘enterprise and personal responsibility’. The subsequent embrace by Glasgow’s civic leaders of a markedly post-industrial trajectory reflected their attempt to work within, while also pushing against, this deeply entrenched policy paradigm. Appreciating all of this is essential in considering appropriate policy responses for the city’s future. Currently, the evidence is that it is not sufficiently appreciated – either in Glasgow, or by the Scottish Government in Edinburgh.