Director of Stallan-Brand, Paul Stallan laments how Glasgow is failing to protect its key historic buildings and calls for investment into the city centre to preserve its built heritage.
Ardenlea Street, Dalmarnock, Glasgow. (Credit Chris Leslie)
Glasgow is losing a historic building every week. At least, it certainly seems that way.
A fire last week took the roof off Glasgow’s finest 18th century Georgian tenement on Carlton Place – an important piece of architecture that defines our Merchant history and relationship with the Clyde. As an architect based in the city, optimism is essential, however, the community outrage at another townscape blackened eye was palpable. What can be done?
My view on saving Glasgow’s crumbling historic architecture is a societal issue, and not limited to prosecuting rogue landlords.
Buildings burning and falling down in our city centres is the physical expression of a deep cultural inertia and a lack of imagination. Immediate incentives and initiatives are needed to arrest further decline as the rips in city’s fabric get bigger.
An empty building at Clyde Place, Tradeston, Glasgow. The building, however, is part of Stallan Brand’s redevelopment of Clyde Place that includes adapting existing building and turning a former four-lane highway into a linear park.
I have lived long enough in the ‘Dear Green Place’ that is Glasgow to know that local regeneration initiatives are cyclic and influenced by a myriad of economic and political issues, many beyond Scotland’s influence. I say ‘many’, as watching the Buddleia take root and seeing kids set fire to our finest buildings is not acceptable.
Regarding what we do have agency over, it’s a big zero out of ten for effort. The Scottish Government is failing to create an environment of hope, setting policies that are contradictory and limiting opportunity for both institutional MNE’s and SME’s to prosper; regeneration initiatives are in complete stasis.
Take for example the Scottish Government’s disastrous rent cap housing policy that has redirected billions in build to rent (BTR) development away from Scotland. It’s completely unforgivable. The fact that much of our rental sector is underpinned by pension money belonging to key workers like nurses seems not to be understood.
What has this got to do with derelict buildings in Glasgow, you may wonder? The answer is: everything.
The Clyde Bank redevelopment in Tradeston, Glasgow by Stallan Brand includes a new headquarters for Barclays Bank, which sees the adaption of an existing building on the banks of the River Clyde. The building is part of three entire city blocks that overlook the river that are being transformed.,
Every Scottish settlement has a planning policy that supports the compact living model, yet Government is failing to stimulate financing beyond their contractor incumbents who would rather focus on suburban schools and infrastructure.
Incentivising the major social landlords to increase their rate of affordable housing delivery or directing the house builders to tackle city centre sites or leveraging global finance into the sector appears to be beyond administrative thinking.
A lack of new city centre residential development directly impacts our historic fabric. Without cyclic renewal, adding new to the old, the old rots away because it exists in an abandoned context. Swathes of Glasgow remain derelict with house builders leapfrogging to the suburbs.
Ironically our housing policy – or lack of – is accelerating the crisis and undermining our economy. Residential construction in Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow has all but stopped. In housing charity Shelter’s damning statement on the matter, it argues that every single tenure type is needed.
Indeed, homelessness in Scotland is at its highest rate since records began, meaning our government has failed to understand and manage our societal relationship with the need for continuous housing provision.
Unfortunately, most elected members have not understood the correlation between the circular economics of housing renewal, employment and the sustainability of our towns and cities.
In May of this year, the Scottish Government came clean and declared a national housing emergency. Blaming the UK Government for this crisis is not enough. Forget austerity, inflation, labour shortages, Brexit and Covid and all the other excuses, Scotland has to own its housing problem and fix it now. In the hierarchy of human needs, the promise of shelter, safety and warmth must be the base.
Glasgow’s legacy architecture is condemned by political, economic and cultural inertia. Only through new forms of slow, sustainable financing and whole environment policy integration can we reclaim old places and deliver new ones.
Team Scotland can, but more importantly needs, to do better.
