A Place to Stand

 
  Some years ago I suggested that if the Red Road flats, owned, through the Glasgow Housing Association, by the government could not be manged successfully by them it would be better to gibe them free to the occupants than knock them down. Let the free market try. After all the free market was building the Glasgow Harbour Project which looks very much like a similar group of high flats and seems to be doing OK.

     Whats so wonderful about knocking down 1300 homes?

     The LibDem councillor who pushed the £40 million "iconic footbridge" and the party's MSP told me that these flats had been so jerry built by Glasgow council's "preferred contractors" that they were unmaintainable which I am now sure was a lie.

    However I failed to get elected and the Housing Association juggernaut rolled on.

   But while there is no interest among our political class for allowing people to keep their homes isn't it nice to know that there is money for commemorating them.

All eight tower blocks will be demolished in a phased programme which will start in the spring (2010) - but first, Glasgow Museums hope to gather stories and memories of the buildings and the thousands of people who lived there.
The flats were the tallest in Europe at the time they were built

For Mark O'Neill, director of Glasgow Museums, the impending demolition of Glasgow's Red Road flats is akin to the demolition of the Egyptian pyramids.
"Some of these flats are higher than the Egyptian pyramids and in the next few years they'll all disappear one by one," he said.
"It's a huge transformation of the Glasgow skyline." ...

That has included the film Red Road - which brought the area to the attention of the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 - and the heart-stopping tightrope walk between two of the blocks undertaken by Frenchman Didier Pasquette in 2007.

And so it goes


  As Matt Quinn commented previously

I was brought up in the Red Road. I started my first Company (Clydeside Television Productions) from my flat in Red Road court. I had a warm, secure, well appointed home. I loved the place, but was forced to move in 1990 because the council were letting it slide just too far.
The place is in the state it's in because of WILFUL neglect on the part of the City Fathers; no other reason. They let the buildings rot, effectively condoned the violence and drugs and deliberately used the place as a dumping ground.
The original posters proposals won't see the light of day for one reason and one reason only; Those holding the controls want their skin; their wedge off the top. Nose-in-the trough time for the City's fatcats and to hell with the ordinary weegie!

  Parasites. It is purely that high flats went from being politically fashionable to unfashionable.

UK's tallest demolition machine arrives in Glasgow to bring down flats

When things are in fashion the economics of what they are doing don't matter either as long as somebody gets more of our money.

Glasgow Housing Association  is fitting solar panels in 500 homes across the city ....
It's part of GHA's contribution to Sustainable Glasgow - a partnership which aims to make Glasgow one of the most sustainable cities in Europe and reduce the city’s CO2 emissions by 30 per cent by 2020