Glasgow Strategies

Introduction

Glasgow city represents a good and early example of urban regeneration in Europe. The Case of Glasgow will be the main concern of this report because it has developed three strategies during the last 3 decades; each of these strategies has developed according to the output & outcome of the previous strategy in addition to public needs and research analysis. Observing and monitoring the changes and the improvement explains the development of different concepts in this period and the changes in the behavior of both community and government. The comparison between Glasgow and Tucson will elaborate similar situations with few differences and how these differences will influence the strategy. Tucson and Glasgow has similar population, size, major problem and as a consequence similar strategy with the main difference of there government structure.

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GLASGOW

The First Phase Strategy:

Situation:

• Glasgow is the largest of Scotland’s cities
• It is situated on the banks of the River Clyde, at the heart of Scotland.
• It is Scotland’s principal commercial centre, of the United Kingdom’s main regional retail centre and one of the main office centers.
• Glasgow population: There is population decline from the beginning of this century: The population were almost 1 100 000 inhabitants in 1931, became 900 000 inhabitants in 1971and reaches 750 000 inhabitants in 1984.

• Cultural heritage more than 50 monuments. Unfortunately the City Improvement Trust (City Council) started its work with more demolition than rebuilding; too much of old Glasgow was swept away.
• Post-industrial city: A general decline of heavy industry was accompanied by a ‘drift south’ of much of what remained. Nor was Clydeside able to share in the expanding industries of the interwar period.

1. It was a ship building, however, which was to give Glasgow its image in the world. By 1903, the city’s thirty-nine shipyards were producing 370 vessels a year. Around 60 000 men were employed, with another 40 000 dependent on this industry. At this time, too, the Clyde appeared able to keep up with the pace of technological change.
2. Iron and steel manufacture were booming by the end of 18th century and the beginning of 19th century. In 1900 the largest steel-making plant in Scotland was employing 2 000 men.

• High unemployment rate
• Housing shortage and social problems (safety, drugs and migration)
• In Glasgow as elsewhere, a major expansion of service industry. The steep rise in service employment is in sharp contrast to the slump in two of the most characteristic heavy industries.  
• 1971, Lord Esher reported on conservation measures within the City - shift in emphasis from slum clearance to rehabilitation and improvement.

Concept:

• General Policy: The Clyde Valley Regional plan was never before this date adopted as policy, largely because of Glasgow's dissent from its main recommendations.
• Structure Plan:
• Economic Regeneration:
• Urban Renewal and inner city revitalization: Nationally, attention was beginning to shift to the problems of the inner cities

Initiative:

• West Central Scotland Plan (Central government)
• Glasgow District Council (local government)  
• Scottish Development Department (responsible for administrating grants to local authorities for derelict land clearance).
• Scottish Development Agency (SDA): It was the political pressure on the labour Party from the advance of the Scottish National Party (SNP), however, which finally brought the Scottish Development Agency (SDA) into being to be the main instrument for the regeneration of the Scottish development in 1974.

• 1975, the new local authorities, Strathclyde Regional Council and Glasgow City Council, came into existence.
• Scottish Special Housing Association
• Greater Glasgow Health Board
• Housing Corporation
• Manpower Services Commission

Strategy:

Objectives:

• To help residents secure employment
• To retain and create jobs
• To improve the quality of life
• The improve the environment
• To create better housing
• To involve community

Focus:

• Major firms
• Sectoral initiative: focused on the needs of industrial sector across Scotland (electronic, health care industry, energy-related industry).
• Area development: focused on the regeneration of specific locations.

These were joint economic and environmental renewal schemes, agreed between the SDA and regional and district councils.

Strategies:

• Housing Strategy (Building new houses, rehabilitating old houses)
• Social Strategy (Attacking poverty)
• Economic Strategy (Jobs and industry)
• Environment Strategy
• Transport and Highways Strategy

Process:

• The Scottish Development Agency (SDA) was created in 1976 to coordinate and manage the development
• The Structure Plan designated four areas (Maryhill, Springburn, Partick and Possil) to be improved in addition to the inner city area (GEAR)
•  Economic initiatives were focused largely on he inner city and old industrial areas, with the periphery left to be taken care of largely by social policy measures.
• Inner City Regeneration Project: Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) project initiated and SDA took the lead.
• Progress during the project constantly checked and reported by the SDA
• Community Organization: The Community Development Project (CDP) and The Comprehensive Community Programme (CCP) initiated by central gov 'action research' in small area
• 1983 – 1987 It was decided to carry on the project with the most tentative commitments to specific projects.
• Measuring the effectiveness of the project is extremely difficult because of uncontrollable variables of national economic trends and also because of the vagueness of its objectives

Output:

 Indicators up to 1983 in the GEAR area

• 51% of the GEAR workforce was employed in manufacturing industry
• Three out four new firms opening in GEAR were in the service sector
• Some 600 work experience places were provided for young people.
• Over 820 000 sq ft of new factory floorspace providing potential for 3 200 jobs were provided.
• 43% of GEAR residents work in the area.
• 26% of GEAR's tenements were rehabilitated
• Over 1400 private Houses were completed
• Some 25 kickabout and local play areas were built
• Over 359 acres of outdoor recreational facilities were established.
• Over £ 7 m were spent on providing leisure and recreation facilities.
• Smoke control orders were implemented.
• Over £ 12 m were spent on improving the environment.

Outcome:

1. Management technique was improved and rigid attitude of gov and bureaucracy began to shift.
2. This strategy was highly selective, touching the commercial and tourist sectors but passing manufacturing by, while unemployment continues at a high level.
3. The continuous of the dual city: the contrast of strong and weak sectors, of prosperity for those in work and poverty of those without a place in a new economic order.
4. The idea of comprehensive programme has given away to a series of projects by the participating agencies, albeit loosely coordinated by the SDA.
5. The peripheral estates didn't benefit from comprehensive economic and spatial planning.
6. The relationship between the area and the Sectoral approaches (individual industrial sectors often being unsuitable for location in urban priority areas).
7. The clash between opportunity and problem: in its task of developing internationally competitive industry in Scotland, the Agency will seek out the most promising locations. These may not be the urban areas suffering the most sever problems of unemployment, environmental decay and poverty.
8. Political management:

• Party competition not existent it was highly required to improve the quality of representation of local community, which will increase the accountability and effectiveness.
• Glasgow's civic leader are not national figures even within the labour party, its innovations haven't fed directly into party policy due to the administrative system of devolution in Scotland.

1. Administrative management:

• Central-local partnership were never clearly spelt out, there were always a degree of domination of the central gov and its agencies on policies pursuing their own planning references
• Although central gov reduced local discretion but it increased financial pressure. However still public expenditures obvious in the peripheral areas for economic, spatial and social regeneration.
• City of Glasgow relied in the past on the central-local bureaucracy and the private sector hasn't enough resources and skills to tackle the tasks of urban management. Nor are its goals that of the community as whole.

1. Fragility of community organization in the peripheral
2. It was important to enhance community's abilities to pull themselves up.
3. Poor investment by public and private sector, together with the low levels of cash income and remoteness from the markets represented by the better-off communities made the development very difficult.

The Second Phase Strategy:

Situation: 

The dominant decline was the growth of unemployment, and particularly long-duration unemployment. This became particularly marked over period 1979-85

Poverty: nearly one –third of the city’s population are dependent one state income-support payment.