r/Glasgow Tools

2 years of building (though I expect it might be a bit more than that) is nothing compared to possible decades and decades of benefits offered by having a more liveable and ideally densely populated city centre quarter.

The embodied carbon of this or any similar scale project ought to be a concern, but it could be that the change of purpose of this area, away from mono-purpose retail and over to a multi-use residential, office and retail mix brings its own benefits economically and environmentally: i.e. more people living centrally and sustaining the city centre economy, paying council tax in Glasgow, and living as close to a major regional and national public transport node as is possible.

The underlying cause for Sauchiehall Street's woes and that of the city centre more generally is the lack of people living in it. We have the least densely populated city centre core of any city of comparable size in Europe. Because of this, our city centre economy is extremely fragile, built upon a dependency on two things: spend by office workers and retail spend. In an era of online home deliveries and working from home, this simply can't be sustained.

Plans like this aren't being driven by the city though, they're coming from private landowners who see there's minimal long-term profit to be made from medium to large retail lets any more: the exact type which make up Buchanan Galleries, St Enoch Centre and Braehead currently. It's just coincidence that the plan that the private owners of these malls have landed on (turning to mixed-use developments) is also likely to be the thing that will save the rest of the city centre.