The 50-year journey for Glasgow has been arduous, uncomfortable and at times ill advised, but it has been transformational. To the young planner who gazed across the industrial wasteland of the East End of the City in the 1970s, it is almost unbelievable that people today freely accept Glasgow as a dynamic and creative City. So in fact it is fine that Glasgow is nothing out of the ordinary. However, the journey from ‘No Mean City’ (the 1935 novel by Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long) to ‘Scotland with Style’ (the last but one branding of Glasgow) is far from complete and the City must not stop the continuous and arduous process of renewal, rediscovery and reinvention. Glasgow’s reputation and its award of ‘Resilience’ made recently by the Rockefeller Foundation (2014) is hard won. It is remarkable that Glasgow can be mentioned at all as a meaningful comparator to Portland in Oregon. Constructive criticism is welcome, needed in fact, especially if accompanied by a willingness to commit to the journey. But ‘hell mend’ anyone who takes an unknowingly ignorant shot at the transformation of this City, this ‘Creative City’ – my City!
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The City has attempted to sustain this programme of renewal with a series of ‘milestone projects’ or ‘pacing devices’. In 1999, Glasgow was awarded UK City of Architecture and used this designation to promote its renewal internationally. The City now has many successful festivals, ‘Celtic Connections’ (a music festival), a jazz festival, a ‘West End Festival’ and in 2014 a hugely successful Commonwealth Games – Glasgow again transforming an established event and taking it to another level. Hope for the future lies with the raft of new small indigenous businesses in the creative and technology sectors – still small but significant and growing.