This film really is a prime example for the misguided strategies of city planners all over western europe in the 1950s to 70s. All the classic mistakes are there: Tearing apart grown neighbourhoods and building huge housing areas instead, that turned into slums themselves within decades, demolishing historical buildings in the city center and replacing them with "contemporary" architecture wherever possible, rebuilding the cities along the needs of the car (and ruining the public transport infrastructure in the process). Most cities now try desperately to revoke these things with what little is left of public funding nowadays. The planners and politicians of the time, however, will never be held responsible for the ill service they did to the "future of their childern", as it is so well put in the film.
Some of that is true, some of it is rose tinted. Do you know how absolutely gridlocked Glasgow's streets were at the time of the inner ring road construction...and that was at 60s traffic levels. It was necessary. They didn't intend for the 1/3 of an inner ring road, basically 1/10th or smaller of the overall planned network, to end up being the only motorway grade road through Glasgow. The full system would have ensured a different story to the traffic nightmare we have today.
@@MartinHannett_ Hindsight is 20/20. There was no malice intended, but it's easy to see where they went wrong. Nonetheless, this whole subject fascinates me. I often joke with my mother in law that what Edinburgh really needs is an 8 lane motorway ploughed right through Princes Street. She's never quite sure if I'm serious or not.... ;)
I don't blame people for trying new ideas in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Most people wanted to move on from the first half of the 20th century. Obviously a lot of mistakes were made, but that's always the case when you try to change things.
Designing a city for the car is only encouraging more use of the car. Look at LA, with it's hugely developed highway system - one of the most clogged cities in the world.
brilliant showcasing. I was born in England in 2005 in the north east. I am the only one in my school that enjoys this sort of stuff. it must of been interesting living in this time to see them big changes. I also wonder how scared people would feel with many motorways blasting through the heartland and them 'wee shops' being destroyed along with all the tenement blocks. I can only say how broken apart communities would become. I do not know why I am interested in Glasgow as I live about 300 miles south of it but it is my favourite city and I feel like I live there sometimes as my Nana and Grandad love to show me around the museums and Subway. Thank You.
Reeee, I'm 12 and so much more intelligent than my peers yet I still write 'must OF'. Fuck off kid. Go back to school and realise you're absolutely nothing special.
Today it's fashionable to criticise all the concrete buildings and car-friendly schemes, but you have to remember how awful things were beforehand, for example the tenement flats that huge number of people in Glasgow used to live in. The tower blocks were a massive improvement by comparison.
Not really sure how true that is these days. I live in a refurbished Glasgow tenement and I have a beautiful home. My friends who live in tower blocks are envious of my place, especially the ones who have kids. The tenements are not the slums they used to be.
Also, a very large proportion of Glasgow residents actually still live in tenements. Some were pulled down in the 60s, but only those that were in really bad condition. The rest are still here.
Refurbish tenements or build larger, modern ones built with a strong respect and inclination towards the old style. People like to look at the old buildings that were turned to rubble, on the other hand no one wants to get within 500m of these ugly, brutalist prison blocks wherever they are built. They should all be torn down and rebuilt with some architectural decorum.
Lot of folks commenting down here seem not to realize that tens of thousands Glasgowegians in the 1950s lived in places without a toilet and a kitchen in the flat and permanently assailed by mold.
My mum was a clippie, my dad worked in cowlairs, eventually my mum got another job but dad stuck with cowlairs, we moved to a 4in a block with a back and front garden my dad had a vegetable patch in the back garden, and the front garden was my dad's pride and joy he had it full of flowers 🌸💐
I totally agree with you about '70s music! This architecture and city planning was more a product of the '60s. Mostly by the '70s the tide had turned and with it more low rise- as seen in the Essex design guide of 1973.
Not really as planning is a profession, based on structure and not social environmental behaviour, unless the homes we live in effect our behaviour. It's all down to the governmental system surely.
The people who inherit them are just as bad. Go around Easterhouse, Ruchazie, Cranhill, Wellhouse etc and see the state of the new builds that some of those scumbags destroyed, just like the slums they whined about. No denying that housing wasn’t well thought out but the jobless deadbeats who got brand new houses built for them have done exactly the same thing as before; wrecked the place.
A superb diss on Glasgow..... I once heard a pro town planner and architect call a new town a nightmare of urban planning worse than Glasgow. Soopoib!!!
During the 70's i was just a kid in Calton in Glasgow, best times were seeing the tractors demolishing buildings, i was fascinated by that. It was weird afterwards when all the buildings were gone and there was all that space left behind.
Aye, the same but in Govan. At the edge of my memories, moving from one slum to the next as they were being demolished behind us. Ending up in the Winealley :(
I was brought up the brigait my mother worked in alices restaurant in brigait I loved that area my family were moved out to provanmill in 1974 we hated living there my best times were in the brigait with my brothers and sisters
seems strange to watch i moved into glasgow in 1971 worked just off high street with a firm of constructional plumbers i watched as most of these were built and have lived long enough to see most of it torn down
The tower blocks did have some problems, but at least they were new homes for people to live in. And it was a time that people actually built thousands of new houses.
"Sense of freedom" in those buildings made out of concrete? Think this a case of thinking that everything new and modern is always better than the previous ways of living.
Of course it was better. More light, more space, central heating, an own bathroom, more green spaces, functional aesthetics instead of decaying grey walls outside of your window etc. 19th century working class housing at that time was cold, crammed and decrepit. Not every old house is a beatiful art nouveau masterpiece...
@@cauliflowersupremacist8789 Yes as nothing says light and space more than being surrounded by concrete walls and parking lots. Not to mention the fact that it turned out later that a lot of those buildings had to be torn down or renovated due to some pretty sloppy construction. Since some liberties were taken in building them.
@@sliceofheaven3026 I know that. All I'm saying is the ideas behind brutalist urban renewal were legitimate. Sadly, the quality of construction was often very poor and many buildings lacked aesthetics in the UK especially. In Western Germany and Austria for example it worked out much better though, one reason might be that it was more market driven and less gevernment sanctioned, however very few buildings have been torn down and most are in acceptable condition although there is also the stigma of "ugliness" around these building there which I personally don't get... Especially if you look at the ugly buildings Germany builds these days.
@@cauliflowersupremacist8789 I just think that the buildings should have been built in a way where there would have been more green spaces between the buildings. Also maybe the buildings should have been less high instead of being these massively large blocks of concrete. Fortunately at least where i live they usually build apartment buildings in a way where they are only about 5 floors high at most and have green spaces with artificial hills between the buildings in some cases. Having visited the old eastern block countries back in the day. These old films remind me of that experience.
@@sliceofheaven3026 The high-rise ones can also be a success... For example the "Colonia-Haus" in Cologne is a brutalist high rise and it's considered one of the top adresses in the city.
A great insight into how things were, and how glasgows shape changed so radically in a short space of time. The theory was decent, but the execution of the plans wasnt; most of those "new" buildings have since been demolished and the infamous "road to nowhere" shown right at the end was only connected to something a couple of years ago when the m74 extension was completed. Thanks for sharing
That bit of road to nowhere that the car stops on at 28:36 is still there; when the M74 was eventually finished in 2011 they missed it out of where the road links together!
Great film. The mistakes they made seem so obvious now. Destroying the sandstone tenements and running the M8 straight through the city! Hard to believe anyone thought these were good ideas but such was the Utopian thinking of the day.
As stated elsewhere, back then those tenements couldn't be saved with the methods available, and were in significant states of decline. Remember, it's only in the last thirty or so years that living in a tenement is seen as fashionable, and even then, only the nice west end ones. Go into the south side and look at some of the neglected tenements ran by slum landlords and it's easy to imagine how poorly they were viewed as dwelling places (even more so when you remember most of them didn't have a toilet).
It's a shame that they didn't stick to aiming these flats at young professionals/students or just single people. They don't really suit those with families or with troublesome backgrounds (something I think they're understanding these days). Very forward thinking, but just came around at the wrong time.
One big concrete mess, stark, grey, cold, impersonal. Nothing on a human scale. So much was promised and very little was delivered. A lot of the "shiny new future" featured here is now 21st blight. A high proportion of the bold futuristic buildings on show have now been replaced. I remember the upheaval the rapid change. It very quickly turned sour as the economy collapsed and society adjusted as best it could. Then came the slogans "Glasgow's Miles Better" and the prestigious international events- Garden Festival & City of Culture, big set pieces & PR bonanzas. Many of the initial problems- poor health & low life expectancy, poverty, sub standard housing, homelessness have in fact got worse over the past 40 years.
"As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense." -- Jane Jacobs
What about if work is suddenly in a big city because your landlord evicted your family to raise sheep on the land instead? Multiply that by a million, chuck in the same number of folk fleeing year after year of famine and genocide, then hard not to make a slum, especially when no one gives a damn about how the slum is built or how many living on top of each other within it.
they built shit over the best built buildings . New was better , build it high give them a toilet of their own. Look around Glasgow today and the 60s buildings have almost been obliterated. Created isolation of communities and dampness in houses. Cant blame them as all local authorities were looking to the great future. All in all it didn't work
fannycraddock99 No money to maintain such big blocks of flats on such large estates !! They were poorly built and never lasted as long as they should have . So the councils let them rot and pull them down !!
Much of the music in this is pretty decent; matter of fact, I'd happily pay for a lot of it if it were available on CD. Just compare that then with the majority of 'library' music, or whatever the modern equivalent is, that they use for corporate and municipal 'puff' videos today: either as bland as a slice of 'sliced white bread' sandwiched between two other slices of sliced white bread...or as frenetic, out of place and unwelcome as palpitations accompanied by hardcore techno while taking tea with the vicar! When did people get so lazy they don't even care how repellent their own 'spin' is?
@@nathan1459 Oh Yeah, no question. To be fair, I think that's quite openly it's purpose. Interesting to compare the 'propoganda', with what Glasgow actually got. I just watched the film again just now and goggled at the amount of taxpayers money that must have been bulldozed into the redevelopment... or *“* redevelopment *”!* Did they get their money's worth? Did Glasgow? (Semi~Rhetorical Question!)
my mum had one of them, till my brother wrapped it round a tree. It was used for a month or two afterwards, but it had a twisted chassis. We kept it going until we got stopped by the police. It was actually a good car, powerful and nice wood finishes inside
"Brutalist! Brutalist! Brutalist!" You all sound like overprivileged BABIES! There was nothing wrong with those buildings. They were clean, modern, and perfectly adequate. The only thing wrong was their choice of tenants. Grateful, intelligent, civilized people THRIVE in these preplanned communities.
TheOriginalMaxGForce try climbing up to the 26 floor of a high rise because the lifts are broken down again, or living is one of Basils, Gorbals damp and mouldy flats. No decent people would want to endure that so they couldn’t wait to get out.
"Newfound prosperity" 😂 Not the Glasgow of 1980 that I remember, these films were always made with an agenda. Scottish national library should go the same way as the great library at Alexandria.
There was only ever one, repeat ONE, REPEAT AGAIN ONE reason why high rise buildings ever came about. And that was the profit motive from going upwards to reap more land sale value and rental to be made from higher numbers of people per square foot of real estate. Economies of design, safety, construction, maintenance created the rest of the nightmares. To spread outwards at a lower height is far more human. Yes, it encroaches upon farmland but that's what population growth does -- it takes space. The whole argument is a trade off between cramped high (far away from nature), or cramped low (but closer to nature). The former has clearly shown itself to be a disaster for the free spirit of humans and the health of the ecology due to city densities. End of argument.
Hi u do a rally good job on RU-vid keep up the good work on here mate keep up there good work on RU-vid how are u ok mate keep up there good work on here form greg Bouchard
BUT NEVER YOU WORRY NONE LADIES AN GENTLEMEN BECAUSE THE ALL WISE ALL SEEING JEHOVAH GOD ALMIGHTY SEES AN KNOWS ALL THINGS CONCERNING HIS LITTLE CREATURES PROBLEMS
Them were great days - if you needed a pee on the way back from the porn cinema at night you could just pish up a close and naebody bothered none of this security entrance malarky .The powers that be ruined everything
