Disappearing Glasgow

A quarter of Glasgow's high-rises have been demolished in less than 10 years. Throughout that time, Chris Leslie has photographed and filmed the condemned housing schemes of his home city for the Glasgow Renaissance project. This book details the evolution of the skyline of Scotland's largest city.

Glasgow is not just famous for its humor, its shipyards, and its bold Victorian architecture, built in the days when it was the "second city of the Empire." It's also renowned as the home in the UK of the failed experiment with modernist architecture in the 1950s and 1960s--where those cleared from 19th century slums of the Gorbals and Govan were housed in vast tower block estates far from the city center, devoid of facilities and a sense of community. Initially a huge improvement on existing living conditions, a lack of investment and poor build quality meant these bold visions of the future soon fell into neglect. Here acclaimed photographer Chris Leslie and author and Professor of Architecture at Glasgow School of Art Johnny Rodger examine Glasgow's process of demolishing these contentious estates. For some they are blights on the city's international reputation, for some an important attempt to redefine the way we live, and for others they were home. This is a beautiful, highly visual book that is both fascinating and moving in equal measure.

In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector. Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.

Thirty years after Glasgow turned towards regeneration, indicators of its built environment, its health, economic performance and its quality of life remain below UK averages. This interdisciplinary study examines the ongoing transformation of Glasgow as it has transitioned from a de-industrial to a post-industrial city during the 21st Century. Looking at diverse issues of urban policy, regeneration, and economic and social change, it considers the evolving lived experiences of Glaswegians. Contributors explore the necessary actions required to secure the gains of regeneration and create an economically competitive, socially just and sustainable city, establishing a theory that moves beyond post-industrialism that serves as a model for similar cities globally.

With this book is completed a trilogy of works begun in 2005 with This City Now: Glasgow and its Working Class Past, and continuing with Clydeside; Red Orange and Green in 2009. The three books have all had similar aims in trying to raise the profile of forgotten or neglected areas and aspects of Glasgow and its history, in a small way trying to boost the esteem in which such places are held by the people who live in there and by those who visit. Moving away slightly from the working class focus, this third instalment presents a broad view of Glasgow's industrial, social and intellectual history. From public art to socialist memorials, and from factories to cultural hubs, Ian Mitchell takes the reader on a guided tour of Glasgow, outlining walking routes which encompass the city's forgotten icons.

Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse explores the history and development of jazz, addressing the music, its makers, and its social and cultural contexts, as well as the various discourses – especially those of academic analysis and journalistic criticism – that have influenced its creation, interpretation, and reception. Tackling diverse issues, such as race, class, nationalism, authenticity, irony, parody, gender, art, commercialism, technology, and sound recording, the book’s perspective on artistic and cultural practices suggests new ways of thinking about jazz history. It challenges many established scholarly approaches in jazz research, providing a much-needed intervention in the current academic orthodoxies of Jazz Studies. Perhaps the most striking and distinctive aspect of the book is the extraordinary eclecticism of the wide-ranging but carefully chosen case studies and examples referenced throughout the text, from nineteenth century literature, through 1930s Broadway and film, to twentieth and twenty-first century jazz and popular music.

Alasdair Gray, author of the modern classics Lanark, Poor Things and 1982, Janine, is without doubt Scotland's greatest living novelist. Since trying (unsuccessfully) to buy him a drink in 1998, Rodge Glass, first tutee and then secretary to the author, takes on the role of biographer, charting Gray's life from unpublished and unrecognised son of a box-maker to septuagenarian "little grey deity" (as Will Self has called him). A Jewish Mancunian Boswell to Gray's Johnson, Glass seamlessly weaves a chronological narrative of his subject's life into his own diary of meeting, getting to know and working with the artist, writer and campaigner, to create a vibrant and wonderfully textured portrait of a literary great.