Glasgow; 1960's urban planning - A warning from history.

[afleitch]

Glasgow was the testground for the first motorway of it's type in Europe; an elevated inner city freeway:



The plan was to build this, and to hasten developement by demolishing most of the areas in grey and throw up new high density housing.



I'm sure even Corbusier would have a hard time swallowing this but;



Demolition began in haste; roads were diverted and grand Georgian and Victorian residential and industrial buildings were flattened.

Only the northern and western flanks were built. The public reacted against the scheme and Labour had been swept out of office. Numerous other schemes from Leeds to paris were abandoned or reworked.

Although un-finished the ring road did bring benefits to Glasgow. An evaluation carried out in 1980 stated traffic speed had increased from 18mph in 1961 to 50mph. time savings were of about 20%. Road fatalities were cut from 16.5 per million vehicle-miles to 0.8.

But that's not all we were tested out for More soon

[Silent Hunter]

I see the Conservative policy of testing policies in Scotland where they don't have many votes to lose pre-dated the poll tax.

[minionofmidas]

I see the Conservative policy of testing policies in Scotland where they don't have many votes to lose pre-dated the poll tax.

They had lots of votes to lose in Glasgow back then... and they did, partly as a result of this scheme... which wasn't their scheme, either.

[afleitch]

It certainly wasn't their scheme and was heavily backed by Wilson's government. And we have Conservative opposition to thank for the abandonment of the east/south flanks

[Silent Hunter]

Ah, my mistake. Sorry. Even Labour governments get things wrong.

[afleitch]

Ah, my mistake. Sorry. Even Labour governments get things wrong.

It was a cumulation of many things. The ring road was first proposed in the Bruce Plan of 1945, which planned to demolish all of Glasgow, all Georgian and Victorian buildings, uprooting the old street system and re-orientating the rail network creating a concrete 'utopia'. Very very very far fetched and luckily was abandoned. Wth the looming New Towns Act which would have banned Glasgow Corporation from building within it's own boundaries everything was dropped only to be restarted when they were allowed to build; hence the CDA's. With Wilson having a sympathetic ear, Glasgow built everything it could in a short space of time between 1964-1970. Heath's administration was less sympathetic than Macmillan had been so the project hit the skids again and for good.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, politicians of all parties f***ed up seriously as far as urban planning in the '50's through to the very early '70's went (if pointing a finger of blame is really needed (and it isn't) the Labour Right should be blamed for not continuing Nye Bevan's enlightend (though very left-wing, obviously) ideas about housing, along with the catastrophic (in the long term; from a short term perspective they made a lot of sense. But that's the '50's Tories all over, frankly) housing policies of Tory governments of the '50's). In some cities (Manchester, Newcastle etc) the insanity was bipartisan o/c.

It's the same story as far as residential segregation goes, btw. Usually Labour Blackburn was just as bad as Frequently Tory Birmingham and so on and so forth.

[Platypus]

Canberra.

Lovely trees, but if you don't have a car you're screwed. I don't see why they can't build an express train line from each satellite city to the center, with buses radiating from the one train station for each satellite city. It'd cost a bit, but with the population booming, and the public transport system as it is being abysmal, and traffic problems worse than Melbourne, it's probably about time.

That said, Sydney's planning was abysmal right from the get-go.

[Richard]

Is Scotland to England like Mexico to the U.S. and Newfoundland to Canada?

[afleitch]

Is Scotland to England like Mexico to the U.S. and Newfoundland to Canada?

No; thats the North of England

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually it's Northern Ireland. Think about it.

(Northern England is more a British version of the Rust Belt)