Credit where credit is due... the men who tried to destroy Glasgow.

Robert Bruce... no not that one

This one...

Robert Bruce was the author of the Bruce report, otherwise known as the First Planning Report to the Highways and Planning Committee of the Corporation of the City of Glasgow. And what was his plan for the redevelopment of Glasgow? To destroy the city and rebuild it. Perhaps his name went to his head and he developed delusions of monarchical grandeur. His 'plan' called for the demolition of some of the greatest architectural treasures in Glasgow. The entire city-centre would be demolished as far as the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which would also be destroyed. The South side and the East end would cease to exist. In place would be a sectioned city of high-rise developments - a residential area, a commercial area, a recreation area, and a business/industrial area. It was akin to the housing projects of the Soviet Union which rather than becoming the Worker's Paradises they were intended to be very quickly became dystopian nightmares. Bruce was an engineer. He believed people should live like cogs in a machine. Another man who wanted people to live like cogs in a machine was the watch-maker Le Corbusier. Why, you might wonder, are men with mentalities more suited to machinery allowed to plan living conditions for humans? Perhaps someone with a wilfully perverse sense of humour encouraged them.

 

Had Bruce's plan been developed in its entirety, Glasgow would, in effect have ceased to exists as it was and is now known. It would have resembled one of the many Soviet-bloc cities of zonal development that were built after the Second World War. As well as the destruction of the Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, the City Chambers, the Art School (now being rebuilt for the second time after a second fire, and at enormous cost), Glasgow Central Station, and almost all the other buildings mentioned in this blog, would have disappeared. Bruce's plans were Socialist in scope, misguided, certainly, but well-intentioned. He wanted to make a 'healthy and beautiful' city. But fundamentally, Bruce had an engineer's mentality. What makes a beautiful machine is not necessarily what makes a beautiful city. History would seem to teach that any attempt to socially plan a city fails and the best cities for living in are those that develop organically according to the needs and desires of the people who inhabit that city. The one group which was not consulted in the redevelopment of Glasgow was the people of Glasgow.

Bruce's pans were modified by an Englishman named Sir Patrick Abercrombie. Primary to Abercrombie's plan was the dispersal of Glasgow's working class to areas outside the city - to New Towns such as Cumbernauld and to housing estates on the city's periphery such as Easterhouse. There was a great deal of friction between Bruce and Abercrombie and eventually a compromise was reached. As well as the New Towns and housing estates, Abercrombie's chief contribution to the 'plan' was the dropping of the M8 Motorway and its arterial roads on the centre of the city - well, not quite the centre, as we'll see. Just as the river divided the city between North and South, the motorway in effect divided the city's West End from the rest of the city.

Sir Patrick Abercrombie... clearly just the man to know what the people of Glasgow need...

As for Abercrombie's plans, it is impossible not to see these as anything other than a modified ethnic-cleansing of the working classes. The plan seemed specifically designed to disperse the populations of the old working class areas which had developed a sense of community and solidarity that gave rise to Communism, Socialism, Trade Unionism and the General Strike in Glasgow of 1926 - and Bruce's plan was developed only 23 years afterwards. These areas of high-density working-class populations were dispersed to New Towns and ghettoes on the edge of the city. No amenities were provided in these areas, and especially no pubs. The ostensible reason was that alcohol was said to be responsible for a great many of the social ills of the old areas. Another reason was that the pubs where the places men met, talked, formed trade unions and became politically motivated. Red Clydside had always been a thorn in Westminster's side, so much so, that the man voted the Greatest Briton, Winston Churchill, had called for the use of the Royal Flying Corps to bomb working class areas of Glasgow in the wake of the Great Strike. 

Glasgow... the worker's paradise Bruce-style

Abercrombie was the son of a stock-broker educated at the Realschule in Switzerland. The Realschile system was widely criticized for separating children along class lines at a very early age. The system was considered to be specifically designed to provide working-class children with a minimal education and to discourage any sense of educational or social ambition. It was part of a school system designed to reserve the best schooling for the upper class without having to resort to private schools. Which brings us to the M8. Why place a motorway in the centre of a city? The West End was, and is, the most wealthy area of Glasgow. The West End remains relatively unchanged by the swath of destruction inaugurated by Bruce and Abercrombie, that is, the middle-class West End. The West End working class area of Partick was substantially destroyed, with little being left of streets such as Purdon St, Castlebank St, and Fortrose St, and other streets disappearing entirely   for the arterial roads which fed the M8. The Working Class area of Anderston more of less disappeared. While the old working class bastions of the Gorbals, Govan, Townhead, Ibrox and Anderston were decimated and their populations dispersed to New Towns and peripheral ghettoes, the middle-class West End was left intact and separated from the rest of the city by a river to the south and a motorway to the east - a moat in modern form. The working classes were moved to the new ghettoes with no amenities - no restaurants, no cafes, no pubs, few shops, no jobs, and limited transport back to the old city. With no work the areas have become benefit dependent and with no pubs the areas are now notorious for heroin use. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, the youth turned to drugs and violence for some amusement. The areas are also famous for the highest instance of teenage pregnancies and single parent families in Britain. The only people I have ever heard speak well of the plans for Glasgow's post-war redevelopment and its after-math are people (by an odd coincidence, people who mostly live in London) who have never had to live or work in these areas but only read about them in books on social planning and post-war architecture. 

If I were given the powers that Bruce and Abercrombie were given I would inagurate a new planning law. People who design homes and housing for the working-classes with no knowledge of their needs or desires should have to live in the same homes on the same estates for ten years. Incidentally, in an other example of wilfully perverse humour, there is now the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize for Social Planning. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... 

And the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize for Social Planning goes to... Easterhouse!