Glasgow: A Typical Post-industrial City
4.1 Glasgow’s Development up to the Inter-war Period
At the end of the First World War Glasgow had long reached and already passed the height of its industrial development but—with the exception of the intrusion of nineteenth-century railways, which in the twentieth century would be paralleled by the intrusion of motor-ways—had not yet undergone any major changes regarding its development patterns, which are all based on traditional principles shared by many industrial cities throughout Europe. At this stage one would therefore expect the most coherent city form and structure, if such coherence ever existed.
The Major Characteristics of the Industrial City
Regarding the development pattern of the city at large, the Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1915/16 shows a fairly dense and compact development in the central area of the city on both sides of the River Clyde (Fig. 4.01a). But development has already started to branch out to the north (Possilpark and Springburn), to the east (Calton, Bridgeton/Dalmarnock and Parkhead), to the south across an east-west railway line (Pollok-shields/Govanhill immediately south of the railway line; further south, beyond Queens Park, Pollokshaws, Shaw-lands, Langside, Battlefield and Mount Florida), to the west (Govan south of the Clyde; Whiteinch/Broomhill and Partick and the West End north of the Clyde), to the north-west (Maryhill).
However, despite the development of suburbs, the city overall is still fairly compact; in 1912 it occupies only 44.8% of today’s city area (today’s political boundaries excluding Rutherglen) (Fig. 4.01b). According to Factsheet 2 (Glasgow City Council, 1997/98), the total area of Glasgow in 1912 was 7,763 ha, and the estimated population for the same year was around 871, 700 (an accurate figure is not available, but an approximate figure has been interpolated from information on the population growth); the gross population density in the city was accordingly around 110 persons per hectare (pph), equivalent to some of the highest densities in the historical areas of the city today.
Closer inspection of the OS map (Fig. 4.01a) shows that these suburban areas developing away from the central area are spatially separated by railway lines (particularly to the south and between the centre and Springburn to the north), the River Kelvin and Kelvin-grove Park (separating the West End from the central area), and a combination of parks and railway area east of the centre (from the Necropolis/Cathedral area via College Goods Yard to Glasgow Green and Richmond Park). Along the railway lines and the River Clyde intense industrial activities were accommodated which reinforce the barrier between the central and the suburban areas of the city. These barriers have influenced much of the subsequent development of Glasgow and are still present today (Fig.
4.02).
4–01. The extent of Glasgow’s development in 1915/16: (a)
Ordnance Survey map of Glasgow, 1915/16; (b) the area of Glasgow in 1915/16 inside today’s city boundaries (based on Glasgow City Council, 1997/98 Factsheet 1)
Though development in the central area can be seen to be continuous, in land- use terms there is no clear city core which accommodates all city-wide activities. Glasgow has no concentric structure with a clearly defined core and rings of development surrounding it. From its origins at High Street and Trongate/Gallowgate the city grew on either side of the River Clyde roughly to the east and west, occupying a broad band of terrain running generally from north-west to south-east, with a lower terrace of a width of between 1.6 and
2.4km, an area under water in Neolithic times (Fig. 4.03), and a high terrace on either side bounded to the south-west and north-east by hills.
In the centre of this terrain is a strip of development north of the river, roughly between the origin of the city and the West End, accommodating a mixture of commerce, retail, education, housing, cultural institutions, churches, university buildings and public administration. One would normally find many of those elements in the city core, but in Glasgow they are spread out over an area of approximately 4 km in length (in an east-west direction) and a depth (in a north-south direction) varying between about 1.5 and 2 km.
This central area is surrounded to the north, east and south by development clusters—suburbs, often nuclear in form around the cross of the burgh, but then further developed on the basis of shared principles of grid structure, perimeter block development, building typology—accommodating a mixture of light and heavy industry and high-density working-class tenements. Outside this U- shaped industrial and tenement area, mostly but not entirely to the west, are the outer suburbs for the middle classes, also adhering to similar development principles but grander in scale, design and landscaping.
4–02. Glasgow’s historical edges: railway lines, rivers and canals
4–03. The Clyde valley: edge of the lower terrace (plan/diagram)
The Common Characteristics of Development Clusters
The 1915/16 Ordnance Survey map (Fig. 4.01a ) also reveals astonishingly consistent development patterns in the city’s different districts despite the fact that development was incremental, as a result of largely speculative projects of individual and generally local investors, without much of a formal planning process (see Reed, 1993, specifically chapters 2, 3 and 5). The design principles responsible for the consistency of the emerging patterns are:
• a more or less regular, open-ended and non-hierarchical grid pattern, so typical of Glasgow, which is modified in places in response to context conditions, for instance where medieval street crosses of former independent burghs are incorporated into the growing city, or as adaptation to topography, rivers and the like, or when specific building configurations are introduced that require the modification of the grid (Fig. 4.04);
• the perimeter block development principle, which has been applied over centuries in almost all traditional cities; building mass, occasionally
fragmented (in the few villa areas) but mostly continuous, is located along the outer edges of a development plot or city block, with building entrances more or less directly off the streets, providing the possibility of good interaction between people in public spaces and private buildings, with semi-private courtyards sheltered by the perimeter buildings from the public, and
continuously enclosed streets and squares appearing as though they have been carved out of a solid mass (Fig. 4.05);
• the repetition of a few standard building types such as the tenement, again so typical of Glasgow and other Scottish towns, the terrace, the urban villa, the multi-storey warehouse and office building, etc. (Fig. 4.06a-e);
• high-density development throughout, in the city centre up to seven or so storeys, in housing areas three or four storeys, whether the house type is a working-class tenement or a middle-class West End terrace or West End tenement (compare the typology);
• horizontal, and in shopping streets frequently vertical, mixture of uses (Fig.
4.07), with living accommodation next to commercial and industrial uses and above shops.
Many of these characteristics are shared by a multitude of traditional cities.
What gives Glasgow its very specific visual-formal character is the use of sandstone as the prime construction material and the application of some late Georgian and largely Victorian design principles, adding to the perseverance of form and colour (the use of ochre sandstone first and red sandstone after 1880/90 generates consistent colour zones), pattern and texture.
4–04. City block pattern of the city centre of Glasgow (excerpt from OS map 1861)
4–05. City block pattern of the park and Woodiands area (excerpt from base map)
4–06. Typical Glaswegian building types:
4–06.(a) terrace and tenement, Great George Street, Hillhead
4–06.(b) urban villas, Kirklee Road, Kelvinside
4–06. (c) multi-storey warehouse, Gardner’s in Jamaica Street, city centre
4–06. (e) industrial building, Broomielaw, city centre
4–06. (d) office buildings, St Vincent Place, city centre
4–07. Living above the shop, Great Western Road, Woodlands
4–08. Glasgow: city expansion by 1925 (based on Glasgow City Council, 1997/98, Factsheet 1)