Glasgow: von der altindustriellen Stadt zur postindustriellen Metropole?

Abstract

With 2 million inhabitants, the conurbation around Glasgow is the largest and economically most important metropolis in Scotland and one of the largest regional metropolis in the United Kingdom. With more than 600 000 inhabitants, the core city of Glasgow is the economic centre of the conurbation. The development of Glasgow in the last decades represents in many respects a model for the fall and revitalisation of an industrially characterised city in Western Europe. The industrial development -focusing on shipbuilding and heavy machinery construction- reached a point of change earlier than in other places and the city fell into a permanent crisis. Only two decades ago, Glasgow was regarded as being the most striking example of metropolitan decline in the United Kingdom. In modern times, the city has broken radically with its industrial past. Glasgow presents itself as being one of the first post-industrial cities of Europe. Glasgow is now regarded as being an example for successful city marketing, which other cities are attempting to copy. The preconditions for the now visible revitalisation of the cities were essentially created as early as in the middle of the seventies. As early as in those days, a connection between economic growth and metropolitan revitalisation was emphasised and a change in the city development policies was initiated. City revitalisation has since been regarded as being a precondition for the revitalisation of the economic basis. Two decades after the change in the city policies, this article takes stock of the efforts of revitalisation and provides an outlook over t he current problematic fields and tendencies within city development.