This is all that remains. But there's hope in these ruins

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

Except that the plans for its regeneration and rebirth have taken another step forward this week with a big dollop of cash – £4.4million – from the City Deal, which is funded by both the UK and Scottish governments. It's the arrangement that built the Govan/Partick bridge and the aim's the same: to build infrastructure and transport networks, fund key regeneration projects, and encourage private investment, the theory being that strong communities are more than houses – they are the links between the houses and the places people go to be together. The £4.4m means this latest project in the East End of Glasgow really is going to happen.
The East End is a perfect choice as well, because a lot of the regeneration (some will call it gentrification) is under way already. I don't know when you were last in Duke Street but get yourself up there: it's one of the city's liveliest and healthiest high streets in Glasgow and is getting especially known for its places to eat. My favourite is La Bodega, the Venezuelan café just off the main road. I go there and order some arepas piled high with tomato, avocado and aji and sit out on the street with the dog and check out the signs of regeneration/gentrification and the signs that there's still some way to go. La Bodega is a strong recommend from me but there are lots of other places like it.
The change that's happening in the area has already been noticed by the sort of people who do lists – Time Out magazine voted Dennistoun the eighth coolest neighbourhood in the world – and although those kind of lists are annoying, there's a shred of truth in it this time. There are also up sides and down sides. Large parts of Glasgow have become unaffordable for students and young professionals (the ones who bring the cool) and so they've found new places and Dennistoun is top of the list. The danger, and it's happening in some parts already, is that the unaffordability spreads here too.
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But you can't fight capitalism – it's been tried – all you can do is work with its forces and try to mitigate the negatives, which is why the plan for the old sheds in Dennistoun has a good chance of working, and could even provide a model for the future. There was a time when the sheds, built in the late 19th to early 20th century, were Glasgow's meat market; then towards the end of their life, they became a car mart and now the plan – paid for in part by the £4.4m – is for sports facilities, a bar, café as well as a path and cycle route through the middle of the site connecting Bellgrove Street and Melbourne Street and on into the centre of the city. Whatever the finished plan looks like, it'll be a big change.
It also indicates – I think, I hope – the shape of things to come and how the regeneration of Glasgow can proceed from here. We know the history don't we – a lot of us have lived it. In the 50s and 60s, large parts of the city were cleared and people were moved out to the edges; Castlemilk and the other estates. The middle classes also started to retreat further and further out and are still there, safe from the clutches of the Glasgow council tax. We also got the new housing estates of the 90s and 2000s; in fact, they're still going up, soulless, treeless, and built around the car and the road and the retail park. It's been the model of development in Glasgow for 60 years and it's failed the city completely.
The alternative is possible in places like Dennistoun, and Govan, and Cessnock, and others: urban, brownfield regeneration that builds muscle on the skeleton that's already there – in the Georgian and Victorian housing, the high streets, the parks, and sites such as the Meat Market. It's already happened to some extent with the flats that have been built on the edge of the site, which are mid-market rentals. The key now is to build on the momentum, which is where the £4.4m comes in.
There are new flats on the edge of the site (Image: Newsquest)
So there's hope in the ruins and it's bigger than just the Meat Market because the project is part of the much larger Collegelands Calton Barras project, also funded by the City Deal. If it's done well, it may help to address some of the big issues Glasgow faces, mainly the depopulation of the centre. The great swathe from the Merchant City out to Dennistoun has incredible potential: it's walkable, it's cycleable, you have one of the city's greatest parks nearby. And yet large parts of it, such as the Meat Market, are totally untapped. Developed in the right way, it could stop the drain to the B&Q estates on the edge of the city; it might even reverse it.
There's also the possibility of tackling another of the problems that's plagued Glasgow (and other cities to be fair) which is the slow death of mixed communities. One of the great joys of moving to Shawlands in the early 1990s was the broad mix of people, ages, races, and classes in the tenements and flats and houses but thanks to property prices, that mix has narrowed to the middle i.e. the middle classes. Shawlands was always a nice place to live but I suppose another word for it would be the dreaded G: gentrification.
The same danger exists with Dennistoun and the East End; people like me are part of it. But handled properly – and the mixed rent flats that have gone up there recently are a good sign – there's a chance to create the sort of mixed community that works best for everyone. Perhaps, if the Meat Market plan goes ahead, we'll see the mix working. I'd like to go back soon, and get my lunch in La Bodega, walk the dog through the park, and revel in the change. Ruins made good. Hope from the rubble.