The leader of a power-sharing project to redevelop the "biggest untapped development opportunity in Europe" has said it will "repair mistakes of the past" that pushed Glasgow communities into poverty.

Susan Aitken, chair of the Glasgow City Region cabinet, said the Clyde Mission project will bring in "billions of pounds" of investment to the Clyde River corridor over the next 20 years.

Ms Aitken, who is also leader of Glasgow City Council, spoke at the Riverside Museum where she and First Minister Humza Yousaf discussed the devolution of the Clyde Mission project from the Scottish Government to local authorities.

The Glasgow City Region is made up of eight local authorities that are currently looking to be formally recognised as a metropolitan region.

Ms Aitken said: "This will not just affect Glasgow - it's the whole Clyde corridor and that is important because it just gives you a sense of the size and scale of this project."

Glasgow City Region has a population of 1.8 million while the Clyde Mission project involves the land 500 metres on either side of the Clyde corridor from Lanarkshire, through Glasgow and out to the sea at Dunoon and Greenock.

The SNP politician added: "It is a huge piece of vacant and derelict land: post-industrial land that has been lying empty for decades in some places, but also some of Scotland's most deprived communities are found along that corridor, often close to vacant and derelict land.

"There is this opportunity here to, probably for the first time, really think about the whole of the river corridor as a single place.

"We will not be tied by local authority boundaries but work together collaboratively, which the local authorities have been doing very successfully for nearly a decade now to drive forward collectively our vision."

The vacant and derelict land along the river and in Glasgow is the equivalent of 20 SEC campuses and is, Ms Aitken said, the biggest untapped development opportunity in Europe, equivalent to the size of the regeneration of London Docklands.

Ms Aitken said: "Although this is about the whole of Scotland's wellbeing, it does need to be led by local people because this is going to be a significant intervention in the places and in the lives of people who live in those places.

"Taking it down to the most local of government is the most appropriate thing to do."

Glasgow has faced recent criticisms in the leadership and running of the city with complaints about rubbish, transport links and the so-called death of the city centre.

But Ms Aitken strongly refuted the suggestions Glasgow is a city in decline and said many of the challenges are "politically motivated" in the run up to the general election.

She said: "Citizens have got every right to ask for better public services and in the council we are constantly trying to improve and do better.

"Just now there is a narrative that is politically motivated to a significant degree.

"I would go as far as to say there are some politicians in Glasgow that would appear to have a vested interest in the city failing - they are giving every impression that they actively want the city to fail."

She added: People have every right to ask for better and that's absolutely fine.

"What I object to is the suggestion that Glasgow is somehow uniquely struggling or that we have these problems uniquely. Issues around litter are faced by every single city."

On the issue of litter in the city, she pointed to the rising amount of disposable food containers generated by fast food delivery that increased due to the pandemic.

Ms Aitken said: "There is more litter than there has ever been in human history.

"We are doing that alongside cities around the world. We are not unique, nothing we face is unique.

"We don't have special Glaswegian rats that are massively bigger or more aggressive than anywhere else."

She also denied that public transport in Glasgow "is broken" but said the City Region must be empowered by the Scottish Government to take control of the transport system.

The council leader said: "I get the bus every day and it gets me from my home to my work. I use the bus to get to other parts of my ward. And yes, there are sometimes frustrations when the stop says it's on its way and it doesn't turn up and that's really annoying and it keeps me late.

"And we do have issues around pricing that we're working on with operators.

"I would like the City Region to be more empowered to take control of our transport system to be able to be more directional and that is coming from the Scottish Government but perhaps not as quickly as I would like.

"But that doesn't mean it's broken. Challenges and weaknesses doesn't mean it's broken."

The Clyde Mission project is expected to bring in billions of pounds in investment to Glasgow and the surrounding areas over the next 20 years in new homes, jobs, businesses and the so-called "innovation economy".

It is also, Ms Aitken said, vital that any changes are beneficial to residents living in poverty and who have been affected by the end of heavy industry in Glasgow.

She said: "We want to create pathways to opportunities for those who were most left behind by the unjust transition from our heavy industrial era.

"It is very much about not repeating the mistakes of the past - and making up for the mistakes of the past by healing some of those physical and social economic scars left behind."

The City Region group has been calling on the Scottish Government to devolve more powers to a local level, including skills policy and transport policy alongside the delivery and implementation of those.

While the City Region local authorities are asking the government to be constituted as an official metropolitan region, Ms Aitken said "we already operate as a metropolitan region all the time and we do so in a collaborative collective way.

"Our city deal is the most advanced in the UK by quite a distance and that City Deal funding is building a bridge that will connect the north and south of the river.

"Right now we're in the Riverside Museum looking over at Govan yet I was told today that the ward with the lowest visitor numbers to the museum is Govan but Govan is within stone's throwing distance of here if you had a very strong arm.

"But it's completely disconnected so that link [the bridge] alone is completely transformational."

She said Glasgow's biggest challenge is the number of residents living not just in poverty but in "deep poverty", describing the Westminster benefits system as "cruel" and failing to properly support those in need.

But she also pointed to the success in Glasgow's education system and the fact the city recently hosted the UCI World Championships.

She added: "For every issue and every challenge we also have improvement happening in the city on almost any issue you care to name.

"The investors that have come into the city - such as the UCI World Championships - folk like that don't pick cities in decline.

"They pick cities that are vibrant and exciting and have a vision they want to be part of.

"Lo and behold, they keep coming back to Glasgow so we must be doing something right."