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Glasgow has been many things to many people over the years. It has variously been named ‘Dear Green Place’, ‘Second City of the Empire’, ‘Workshop of the World’ and ‘No Mean City’. Today, it is simply one of the most interesting cities to visit in Britain. Yet for most of the 20th-century people would have laughed if anyone had suggested visiting it for pleasure. The city had a reputation for both violence and poverty and the conditions in its sprawling slums (ironically a legacy of the very industries that had made the city wealthy) were amongst the worst in Britain. It is a reputation that has been slow to shift. As late as 1996, a survey by The Scotsman newspaper asking residents of Edinburgh (only 40 miles away) what they associated with Glasgow, came up with: deep-fried pizzas, rickets, Rangers and Celtic, Irn Bru and Billy Connolly. Hardly a ringing endorsement. In the face of such entrenched attitudes other, less gutsy cities might have given up and spiralled further into decline, but Glasgow refused to accept the seemingly inevitable. Under the banner of its ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’ campaign, the city began to reinvent itself. Someone once said that all Glasgow needed was a good bath, and they were right. Buildings, blackened by years of pollution, were scrubbed clean, creative talent was nurtured, smart shops and restaurants encouraged to open up in the city. Designers, realising that Glaswegians loved clothes and were prepared to pay for good ones, opened outlets here and soon the city’s Italian Centre was the home of both Armani and Versace. The campaign was so successful that in 1990 the city was nominated European City of Culture, a success it followed by becoming European City of Architecture and Design in 1999. Not only were these triumphs, to the delight of many Glaswegians, the nominations also put Edinburgh’s nose severely out of joint. A few rough edges remain, of course, to provide the essential urban grit and the backdrop for the occasional TV detective. It’s true that the city’s renaissance suffered a few blows in the late 1990s when its great rival Edinburgh was announced as the permanent home of the Royal Yacht Britannia – a ship that had been built on the Clyde and that would have provided a welcome boost to the city’s tourist industry. This was followed by the announcement that Edinburgh would also be the site of the new Scottish parliament and – even worse for Glasgow’s fashionistas – would be the location for Scotland’s first branch of Harvey Nichols. It would be much harder now for Glasgow cabbies to happily dismiss Edinburgh as ‘one street and a castle’. But Glasgow has been fighting back. An enormous shopping centre, the Buchanan Galleries, recently opened in the city centre, and a gleaming, futuristic Science Centre has been built on the banks of the Clyde. New homes, offices and hotels are being built on derelict land along the river. Of course the city still has its social problems and areas of deprivation – what city doesn’t – and now signs of racial tension are beginning to show as more and more asylum seekers are housed in the city. But the city no longer has to prove itself, it knows that it can now compete with the best in Europe, and while it has gained a new confidence in recent years, it hasn’t lost its irreverent sense of humour along the way. Glaswegians might drink cappuccino now – but they’ll soon spot if it’s got too much froth on top.
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