This week's launch of Glasgow's year of architecture and design presents a challenge for planners, builders, and buyers. One way of judging whether the big year has a real impact on the face of the city is to look for significant changes in the way we design and build our houses in the new millennium.

Create good housing and you build strong sustainable communities. God knows, Glasgow has tried hard enough in the past, but managed to make some disastrous errors. This time, by getting the scale of development right, we could provide exciting new homes for the future.

The process is already under way. The Crown Street Regeneration Project is creating a new Gorbals. Last time around the planners tried wholesale demolition, replacing the slums with vast new blocks of high rise flats or long terraces of maisonettes. Despite the best efforts of architects like Sir Basil Spence, it was a failure. Many of the buildings did not suit our damp climate (most houses are designed to prevent rain from penetrating from above, the West of Scotland's high speed horizontal rainstorms had not been allowed for).

But there was another reason for the failure of the redevelopments of the sixties and seventies. The only homes that were provided were for the working classes. Yet the original Gorbals was a mixed community of merchants, skilled workers, and unskilled labourers.

The Crown Street project is creating new homes for owner occupiers who can afford to pay #80,000 or more for a three-storey townhouse. But just across the road, or around the corner, there are housing association developments where prices and rents are subsidised. A mixed community is being created by private sector builders, supported by a variety of public sector initiatives.

When Glasgow was competing against Edinburgh and Liverpool to win the right to stage the big year, one of the clinching factors for the city was the involvement of housing associations which were already using bold new architecture. As they have shown, it is as important to get design right at the bottom of the housing ladder as at the top.

Just across the Clyde from the Gorbals lies the site of one of 1999's key features. The Homes for the Future project will create an eclectic mix of very modern housing on Glasgow Green, close to the Saltmarket. Apart from their bold designs, the properties will also offer a range of prices from affordable rented properties to luxury penthouses.

Glasgow has a wonderful architectural heritage, too much of which was thrown away in the past. But we can't afford to build in sandstone under slate roofs any more. So we must look to the architects to come up with creative designs utilising modern materials. But these have to be commercial. any architect can design a wonderful one-off home for a millionaire. Producing refreshing architecture for the mass market is where the real challenge lies.

Too many new build developments are bland and boring, almost terminally twee. It does not need to be like this. As we'll see later this year on Glasgow Green, the designers have the ideas and there are builders and housing associations prepared to take a risk on them. If these homes are quickly sold or let, then we can look forward to more innovation.

It is too easy to blame the builders. If nobody is prepared to buy modern designs, then the builders have no incentive to provide anything other than pastiche cottages and Tudorbethan semis.

This year should also get us thinking about those other features which will be vital in the homes of the future. Apart from mixed communities, sustainable housing is fast moving up the agenda. We are likely to see much wider use of energy-efficient construction, as well as better boilers and heating systems - saving cash, as well as the planet.

Solar power; the use of grey water from the washing machine and shower to flush the toilet or water the garden; higher insulation standards; walls which retain heat from the day and pump it out at night - are all becoming part of the toolkit for tomorrow.

Applications can range from the latest low-cost boiler in your nearest new housing development, to the Earthship - a house design from California which uses old tyres rammed with earth for structural walls and compacted tin cans to provide interior partitioning. Before you laugh, I have to tell you that they look impressively executive - nothing like the hippy hovel that might be imagined from their structural materials. Apart from recycling tyres and tins, the design has its own insulation - maintaining a pleasant internal temperature.

Maybe this year will see someone come up with serious proposals for one of the biggest urban challenges of all - the house for life.

Some of have to move home because of our jobs, but millions of other people have to make moves because their home no longer fits their needs. Surely it is time we came up with a sustainable design for homes which can adapt to meet changes in family life and income.

London architect Brian Avery has come up with an innovative townhouse design where you basically stack new units on top of each other as your requirements change. As a new unit is lowered by crane, services such as water, drainage, electrics, and stairs are all designed to readily marry together.

A group of Norwegian designers is working on a system to encourage people to own or rent two smallish adjoining houses. Financed by the Norwegian State Housing Bank they are designed to be used either as a single housing unit, or as two smaller units for people to live separately. The idea is to change the size and pattern of use, as housing needs and financial status change.