Drifting away from reformist politics in Glasgow

I spent the weekend in Glasgow and Edinburgh participating two meetings on regeneration, gentrification and the 'revanchist city': RESISTING REGENICIDE : STRUGGLES IN THE CITY

In between the two marathon talks (respectively 4 and 3 hours), organisers and part-time psychogeographical tour operators Neil Grey and Leigh French took us on a few marathon drifts through neoliberalising Glasgow.

Mono cafe/bar, bistro-style vegan food and uncompromising toilet-text

Day One:

Paddy's Market to New Gorbals, site of the proposed M74 Gorbals >> People's Palace to Barrow and ending at the frontier lines of the Merchant City

It started with an overdose and soon after human remains... Cronenbergian stretched umans adorn the doorways to the New Gorbals housing estate, a low rise Poundbury-style mixed development incursion into the traditionally recalcitrant working class area of the Gorbals.

New Gorbals Housing estate - two earlier council towers (recently re-clad) in the background

No idea what this mermaid is doing here nor the ghost (of the Victorian poor?) she appears to guard. Keeping the newcomers safe from the haunting threatened by the locals and ghosts of regenicides past? Public craft-kunst attempting to fill the reality shortfall wrought by aspirational PPPism and the flattening of historical memory

Ghoulish!

Hanging umans adorn New Gorbals Housing Estate - horror of regenecide! (photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

Our tour guides do not understand either... perhaps after regenecide there is nothing to understand - there's only disengagement, alienation, rage. We hop the fence out of the New Gorbals concentration camp and into the wasteland of a former pig-iron works - site of the proposed M74 motorway.

Inside the works there's a bunch of kids chucking up graf and in the background a replica of Michaelangelo's David forms a landmark for Cosmo's carpet warehouse (any relation to Cosimo da Medici?).

(photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

We get out of the 'wasteland' walking through the Gorbals back across the Clyde to the People's Palace then Barrow and finish at the frontier lines of the Merchant City

Surveilling eyes inspect the works carried out after housing stock transfer in the Gorbals (photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

Day Two:

Mono bar, Merchant City to Partick > Starting at Mono's bar > St Enoch's > Screw bridge across Clyde > Armadillo > Fairfields Shipyard > Clydeside tunnel > Prestwick Lios mor Pub

Lancefield Quay (photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

Gentrifying Zone Lancefield Quay (photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

Going over the Squinty Bridge - signature architecture but will it hold up and which 'world' city are we in anyway?

Squinty Bridge (photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

From here to old Govan there are shiny aluminium feature creatures, BBC offices, abandoned shipyards, the former site of proto-regen Glasgow Garden Festival [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Garden_Festival] organised by Michael Heseltine. Only the headquarters of Sunny Govan Radio cheers our spirits. Should we seize the airwaves? Or mumble and stroll on?. Only the headquarters of Sunny Govan Radio cheers our spirits. Should we seize the airwaves? Or mumble and stroll on?

Fairfields Shipyard Govan

We head through the town centre past St Enoch's and down the Clyde. Crossing over another signature bridge that could be any city from Newcastle to Rotterdam we eye up the new BBC Scotland headquarters - assorted aluminium-clad designer follies before finding our feet amongst Govan's mix of dereliction and philanthropy.

Clyde Pedestrian Tunnel (photo Martin Slavin, Creative Commons Licence)

Passing through the Clydeside tunnel/underpass surfaced with calligraphic racism, orientalist-hermaphrodism and linguistic ultraviolence turned against its own: 'if oor intae one o oos yoor intae all a oos', we surface for a quick glimpse of a battleship covered in radar-cheating pyramids faced off by credit crunched dormitaries. The ships go under the radar and we go under the Clyde and under the ships. A walking parody of the economy of silence, stealth and secrecy quietly rumbling above - Clyde Tunnel acoustics test: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UHXsWGPNCu0%20 The only shipyards not closed during the Thatcher years were those that built ships for the Navy. BAE systems continue to build floating military hardware here but now flanked by media offices and luxury flats.

We stop in Prestwick for victuals before missing another cheap flight home - trauma of budget travel. At least Ryanair will make a loss this year - destination economic trauma. Neoliberalism rules... ok?

Links

Glasgow

Variant Magazine www.variant.org.uk

City Strolls http://www.citystrolls.com

Neil Grey, 'The Clyde Gateway: A New Urban Frontier'http://www.variant.randomstate.org/33texts/3_V33gray.html

Edinburgh

Save Our Old Town (Soot) http://www.eh8.org.uk/

Autonomous Centre Edinburgh (ACE)http://autonomous.org.uk/

Independent Republic of the Canongate http://www.independentrepublicofthecanongate.blogspot.com/