Losing Our Dear Green Places Are City Planners Caving in to Developers' Pressure?

The Herald › February 06, 2006

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Summary

GRACEFUL living. It will seem to many in Glasgow an alien concept, yet it was the ideal the Victorian designers who laid out much of the city sought to achieve. It is still apparent in some areas, notably the west end. Its parks, gardens, tennis courts and bowling clubs are part of what makes it one of Glasgow's most desirable residential areas. It is, in design terms, the area towards which much of the rest of the city should hope to aspire. Instead, its greenery is gradually disappearing: city planners are buckling under the pressure of developers who see open spaces as prime development plots.

The individual sites under threat may seem, in isolation, relatively unimportant. An outdoor sports club in Jordanhill sold off to a housing developer; a tennis club in Dowanhill whose members are sorely in need of the cash they would receive if sold. The cumulative effect if these and similar developments went ahead would be significant.