Glasgow's Urban Transformation And Transformation Study (1957-2016)

Located in Scotland,Glasgow is the third biggest city in the UK.Glasgow became an important industrial city of UK in the early 19 th century owe to the Industrial Revolution and overseas trade.However,the city began to decline after the Second World War,tortured by a number of urban problems.Facing so many difficulties and challenges,Glasgow tried to recover through a serious of actions: urban renewal,urban regeneration and urban renaissance from the middle of 20 th century.Urban renewal started from 1950 s to the late 1980 s.The urban renewal was house-led in the early stages: building the houses in the suburb to attract people and reduce the population in the city center.The government of Glasgow took charge of it totally.However,the trials failed due to kinds of reasons,such as the insufficiency of infrastructure construction.After that,the problem of inner city recession revealed slowly,so the personal interests were involved in the urban renewal.The culture-led urban regeneration was put forward in the 1990 s.On the one hand,lots of cultural sites appeared in Glasgow and many cultural events took place in the city.It was best shown in 1990 when Glasgow was elected as European City of Culture.Tourism as well as the popularity of Glasgow was quickly promoted after 1990.On the other hand,we can see the holistic view and historical view from Crown Street Regeneration Project.It not only considered of the overall community construction,but also showed the respect of history from the site and style of new buildings.Glasgow witnessed the creative-led urban renaissance in the 21 thcentury.The aim of the urban renaissance is to make Glasgow a creative city and the strategies include three parts.Firstly,create multiple city image to promote the tertiary industry.Secondly,design public art to make the city more open and tolerant.Thirdly,explore the open creative space to provide normal citizen of creative activities.In the end of the thesis described the features of urban changes in Glasgow,including three parts.The subject of the changes is more related to private interests.The object of them is altering from physical space to cultural and creative space.And the effect of them is sometimes contradictory.Last but not least,we Chinese cities can learn something from the pattern of Glasgow.Our urban changes should transfer into multiple subjects instead of single subject.The target of urban changes should pay more attention to humanity rather than physical space.The planning of urban changes should alter from partial view to holistic view.The method of urban changes should rely more on culture than real estate.