THIRTY years before the M77 protesters were chaining themselves to the
Pollok trees the New Glasgow Society was expressing its concern at the
effect upon the city of a #485m, 285-mile motorway plan for Glasgow.
Today, with only one-tenth of that plan completed, the society is
still pressing for an alternative integrated public-transport system.
Almost forgotten are past battles to restore tenements, modernise the
subway, stoneclean buildings, stop a downstream oil refinery, or save
Great Western Road from a six-lane expressway.
Needless to say, derision greeted such ideas as city tourist and
public relations units, riverside walkways, pedestrian streets, and an
exhibition centre for the redundant Queen's Dock. Today they all feature
prominently in Glasgow's promotional material.
Next week (April 23-30) the New Glasgow Society celebrates 30 years of
successes -- and failures -- with a series of events ranging from the
inaugural Victorian Walk to a Glasgow film night and a civic reception
culminating in a ''Winners-and-Losers'' bus tour of 38 past campaigns.
However this week the society has objected to the demolition of eight
listed buildings for the proposed #200m M74 extension into the city, and
is asking Parliament to intervene in the controversial CrossRail scheme
which plans to resite its stations at High Street and Glasgow Cross
further away from busy traffic areas.
The 30-year-old fight ''to encourage high standards of architecture
and town planning in the Glasgow region'' continues.
Alistair Fyfe,
Chairman,
New Glasgow Society,
1307 Argyle Street,
Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article