Wednesday 1 October 2008

Regenerating Glasgow


The 20th century witnessed both decline and renewal in the city. After World War I, the city suffered from the impact of the Post-World War I recession and from the later Great Depression, this also led to a rise of radical socialism and the "Red Clydeside" movement. The city had recovered by the outbreak of the Second World War and grew through the post-war boom that lasted through the 1950s. However by the 1960s, a lack of investment and innovation led to growing overseas competition in countries like Japan and Germany which weakened the once pre-eminent position of many of the city's industries. As a result of this, Glasgow entered a lengthy period of relative economic decline and rapid deindustrialisation, leading to high unemployment, urban decay, population decline, welfare dependency and poor health for the city's inhabitants. There were active attempts at regeneration of the city, when the Glasgow Corporation published its controversial Bruce Report, which set out a comprehensive redevelopment programme which aimed at turning round the decline of the city. The whole scale destruction of large inner city areas and the devlopment of high rise flats where the first phase of redevelopment. However by the 1970's regeneration was seen as the solution were old tenement areas were transformed and improved. However, by the late 1980s, there had been a significant resurgence in Glasgow's economic fortunes. The 'Glasgow's miles better' campaign, launched in 1983, facilitated Glasgow's new role as a European centre for business services and finance and promoted an increase in tourism and inward investment. The latter continues to be bolstered by the legacy of the city's status as European City of Culture in 1990, and concerted attempts to diversify the city's economy. This economic revival has persisted and the ongoing regeneration of inner-city areas, including the largescale Clyde Waterfront Regeneration, has led to more affluent people moving back to live in the centre of Glasgow, fuelling allegations of gentrification. The city now resides in the Mercer index of top 50 safest cities in the world. Despite Glasgow's economic renaissance, the east end of the city remains the focus of severe social deprivation. A Glasgow Economic Audit report published in 2007 stated that the gap between prosperous and deprived areas of the city is widening. In 2006, 47% of Glasgow's population lived in the most deprived 15% of areas in Scotland, while the Centre for Social Justice reported 29.4% of the city's working-age residents to be "economically inactive". Although marginally behind the UK average, Glasgow still has a higher employment rate than Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester

River Clyde "Years Gone By"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester">Manchester.

And now for some fun!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yeahh sir