Red Road Demolition

A couple of years ago I blogged on the Red Road Flats in Glasgow and their imminent destruction. It wasn't quite as imminent as I thought but it now appears that next Sunday, 10th June 2012 153-213 Petershill Drive will be demolished. As someone with an interest in planning, urbanism, architecture and Glasgow this is a significant event because it represents the end of an era, and in particular the end of the great public high-rise housing experiment that Glasgow embraced. 

153-213 Petershill Drive

The delay in getting to this point is related to the process of moving the asbestos from the buildings, which you can see in this fascinating time-lapse video...

The demolition story is documented on Safedem's Red Road Demolition website and the demolition itself can be viewed live there next Sunday. I'm sure they'll also have lots of video coverage of the event soon after, as they normally do. You can find more details about the original project and architect on these pages.

For me, the most interesting and important aspect of Red Road are the stories told by people who lived there, which are captured on the Red Road Flats website.

Red Road Flats, Glasgow

Since they're not going to be with us much longer, I'm writing a short post about the Red Road Flats in Glasgow - a group of eight high-rise social housing blocks in the north of the city. I used to live just over a mile away from them and it will be strange when they are gone since they have been such a feature of the city's skyline for more than 40 years. There's some really interesting material on the flats on this website, set up specially to document their demolition.

Just to be more precise about where they are, here's a Google streetview:


View Larger Map

There's also a series of Quicktime panoramas here (with further links on the right of this page). There's also a gritty/disturbing 2006 film of the same name which is set there. There are hundreds of other potential links, but the final one here is from a short BBC film of the area. The schedule for demolition is a little unclear, but the first block is supposed to be toppled in spring 2010.

Finally, I edited one of my very own Red Road photos (taken in 2005) to see what the skyline will look like from Petershill Road once they are all gone (the picture below is a small animated gif).

Cities are Back?

Just a quick post today regarding the issue of whether British 'cities are back'. Since the report of the Urban Task Force in 1999 and the much-cited 'urban renaissance' cities have been back on the agenda but in a more positive light than in the past. People now seem to want to live in them again, city-centre living has been given a new lease of life and huge amounts of public and private cash have been spent doing them up. However, is all of this a good thing? I would say that overall it is but I just wonder how sustainable it is. What are the implications if it all goes wrong and investors and people flood out of the cities once more? What if people don't really want to live in the shadow of tower blocks forever. What if it is not really a renaissance?

I took this picture in Glasgow in July 2004. Contrast between 1960's tower blocks at Red Road and 2000's new builds. Quite striking I think. An illustration of how urban policy plays out in reality. We'll have to wait and see how the urban renaissance pans out but for now I suppose we ought to wish it all the best and keep track of how things go.