It was meant to be a pleasant stroll along the River Clyde. Little did the couple know they had meandered into the underbelly of Scotland’s largest city—public enemy territory. Still haunted by the city centre Clydeside two weeks on, Councillor James Scanlon demanded action.

“Two weeks ago my wife and I walked around that stretch and the smell of hash was unbelievable. I had a sore head for 24 hours,” he told the most recent full council meeting.

The stretch of the Clyde he encountered was “ghetto like”. What was being done to remedy this blight?

Other pearl-clutching residents agreed. The graffiti was “hideous, tasteless, provocative and frightening,” they told him.

The Glasgow stretch of the River Clyde gets a bad rap. The city and the country have turned their backs on it. The very resource the city was built on, that made Glasgow the Second City of the Empire, has been reduced to a watery grave for nextbikes and shopping carts. Privatisation, lack of investment, neglect, deindustrialization. Good old Milk Snatcher Margaret Thatcher stole the thing right out from under Glaswegians and sold it piecemeal to private companies. The infuriating and depressing legacy lives on.

In a recent podcast series called Who Owns The Clyde?, architect Jude Barber and crime writer Louise Welsh unpack the complicated nature of its current patchwork of ownership. Presented by The Empire Café, the project originally sought to map the ownership of the Clyde: its banks, riverbed, sky above, the land on either side. But what they stumbled into was an opaque web of ownership that became near impossible to untangle. The derelict gap sites dotted along the riverbank fracture access for Glaswegians and hold back countless plans lodged by the council and the Scottish Government to clean the place up.

Custom House QuayCustom House Quay (Image: Glasgow City Council)

The River Clyde Development Corridor, a 30-year strategy for the area, is well underway. The Govan-Partick Bridge is open for business. The Clyde Waterfront Innovation Campus should be completed next summer. There’s also the Water Row Development, the Byres Road Revamp leading to the waterfront and the River Activation Programme trying to bring the river corridor back to life. This Strategic Development Framework knits into the Clyde Mission, a project to fix up the river from Lanarkshire to the sea that the Scottish Government transferred to the Glasgow City Region. Clydeplan, Clyde Metro and National Planning Framework 4 also play a part.

But the utopian potential of unlocking the Clyde and returning Greater Glasgow to its Second City glory is perpetually undermined by private owners. Private companies who sit on stagnant land waiting for the value to rise. Private companies who feel no responsibility to the city and show no care to its prosperity or sense of place. There is not enough transparency to hold these firms to account and demand they stop neglecting chunks of the city and prioritising profit over community needs.

Jude and Louise’s podcast shines a light on just how difficult it is to actually create a cohesive map of ownership. Title sheets cost £3 and can be arcane at the best of times, sparking a murky search for companies within companies within companies. At the SNP Conference in Edinburgh last month, Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken called out hedge funds behind derelict land in the city for not caring about the ruin they are causing. “It is sitting there as a tax write-off. If we were able to get that land the benefits would be phenomenal,” she said.

One company that has substantial interests along the Clyde is English firm Peel Ports. The company bought Clydeport in 2003 and owns 450 square miles of the River Clyde. You may recognise the name from some previous headlines in The Herald: Port giant accused of sacrificing Clyde to save Mersey, Revealed: The overseas-controlled Scots ports being considered for tax breaks, or Revealed: how the company regenerating the Clyde pays as little tax as possible.

What is the council to do with its belt so tight its eyes are popping out? Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) only work when you have the money to engage in lengthy legal contests and the cash to purchase an asset at the other end of it. It’s the same issue that Glasgow is faced with when it comes to dilapidated heritage assets. The best we can hope for is creative engagement with private companies to agree on mutually beneficial regeneration projects. Perhaps with a little arm twist thrown in.

As a country we should be focussed on ownership transparency. How do we make the Land Register of Scotland fully digitised and free to access for all? That would be a great place to channel funding into. Let’s double down on efforts to make the Companies House register accurate and explicit. Allowing community leaders to hold stakeholders in their area to account is paramount to democratic process.

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Despite (rather offensive) complaints that the Clydeside has turned into the “ghetto”, there is hope for its regeneration in the pipeline. A public consultation is currently live for a £25 million river park project aimed at reconnecting Glasgow and its waterfront. It involves building a walkway 20 metres over the water in front of the A-listed Custom House and a new green space created at Carlton Place. Presumably it will link up with the forthcoming North Laurieston masterplan, due to be published by the New Gorbals Housing Association later this year.

Proximity to natural bodies of water is linked to positive mental health benefits. And while the Clyde is more of a brown space than a blue space, it sure makes me feel connected to the roots of the city when I stroll along it. Dust might be settling into the cracks of the shuttered Virgin Hotel’s GUBI pacha lounge chairs, but we should not give up on the dream for a thriving riverside area.

It’s not the punks painting again, smoking hash anaw that are the existential threat to the Clydeside. It’s a longstanding lack of transparency over who owns the city and what they plan to do with it. Instead of patching things up, actually look at the root of the rot: how businesses are able to stay hidden. Because that is why Glasgow is no longer the Empire’s Second City.

Marissa MacWhirter is the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. Each morning, Marissa curates the top local news stories from around the city, delivering them to your inbox at 7am daily so you can stay up to date on the best reporting without ads, clickbait or annoying digital clutter. Oh, and it’s free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1