| Comment | I think we needn't have kept the pre-1860s stuff to have something like that. The post-1860s Victorian architecture and city blocks around Glasgow Cross and High Street (though chunkier and much less fine grained than what came before) would have made for a coherent and distinct 'old town' neighbourhood if it hadn't been fragmented. A fragmentation that started pretty early on, beginning with Victorian infrastructure around the railways, and worsened in the 1950s as land was cleared around Gallowgate for the motorway ringroad that was never built.
A little community of independent shops has cropped up around Trongate over the last decade or so. I'm pretty hopefully that the area around there could blossom even more once the big Candleriggs housing development opens up. We still have a lot of Victorian texture to that corner of the city, and even up High Street and down Saltmarket.
If High Street can become something other than an offramp and onramp to the motorway system, it wouldn't take very much for it to see a resurgence. It's a very unpleasant street to walk down or try to cross on foot. I think I remember reading that there is some medium term plan to develop High Street - Saltmarket as a tourism trail. I'm not sure how far along that plan is beyond some new signage which appeared recently, but removing the direct connection to the motorway interchange is a necessary first step. |
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