It isn’t all about me obviously but let me start with a memory. For ten years or so, until 2014, my main route to work in Glasgow was along the south bank of the river, on the path from Springfield Quay to the Squiggly Bridge. Often, it was glorious; sometimes, it was frustrating; now, in 2024, it has become a sign of Glasgow’s deep, deep problems.

Why glorious? Because you were close enough to the Clyde to feel its strength and power and you also got a superb view of some of the city’s best architecture (my favourite: the Clyde Port building, handsome in Giffnock stone and topped by Zeus, disguised as a bull of course). On sunny days (rare) there was a real buzzy atmosphere on the path (walkers, cyclists, runners, dawdlers). But even on wet days (not rare) there was a melancholy pleasure to be had from it. Love Glasgow, love the rain.

But I said frustrating too and I meant it because the path was also a lesson in less successful decisions along the river. The mediocre flats put up in the 80s and 90s; the bland offices; the empty townhouses on Laurieston Place; the promise of the garden festival, a promise not kept. In many cities, the riverside is a place people want to live, work and socialise, but, enjoyable as a walk along the path could be, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that in Glasgow, the river’s potential was largely neglected, unrealised, and untapped.

Sadly, the latest news about the path would seem to support that conclusion. As you may know, the stretch from Springfield to Tradeston was closed in 2014 when it was discovered that some parts were unstable, meaning people could no longer walk along the river and were forced to use the main road instead. I must say I missed my walk or cycle along the path, but I also assumed it would be fixed eventually.

Wrong. Here we are in 2024 and not only did it take about ten years (!) to get a plan ready, we’ve now been told that even that plan will not now happen because it’s too expensive. The owners of the nearby flats had been willing to pay about £1.4m and most of the rest of the cost would have come from the City Deal fund. But even that’s apparently not enough to cover the £18m bill, and so the plans have been scrapped.

The immediate explanation is obvious. Contractors were pitching for the work but the cheapest was £25m over the budget and if you’ve been involved in any kind of building work recently, you’ll know why: inflation, Brexit, conflict, you name it, they’ve sent construction costs soaring.

But the fact that Glasgow has effectively abandoned a stretch of path along the river reveals the bigger problems here. The council says the current design is the only viable option for City Deal investment. But even if a way could be found to edit the plans to make them cheaper, we’re still lumbered with systemic problems that make it hard for Glasgow to properly fund the city, its streets, its buildings, its infrastructure, and a path by the river.

The Herald:

The MSP Paul Sweeney, a great champion of Glasgow’s built heritage, has highlighted one of the potential issues. Privatisation of the Clyde Port Authority’s assets over the last 50 years, he says, has stranded the residents at the former Kingston Dock with the liability for maintaining its quay walls. Mr Sweeney’s solution would be to re-establish a port authority trust so the Clyde can be managed in the public interest again.

This is a perfectly fair idea but there remains the question of money and the fact that Scotland’s biggest city is reliant on funds from a population that is artificially small. In other words, there just aren’t enough people paying the council tax.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, the number of folk who live in the centre of Glasgow is small, partly because the council has prioritised offices and shops. And no one seems to have realised yet that the days of city centres dominated by offices and shops are over.

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But the second problem is bigger and goes back to the reorganisation of local government in the 1990s. What it meant then, and still does, is that thousands of people who effectively live in Glasgow, or greater Glasgow, do not pay Glasgow’s council tax. They use its facilities, its roads and so forth, but don’t pay a penny towards it. It is the shocking inequality at the heart of Scottish local government.

Why no one has tried to fix this problem I do not know but what it means is that, by definition, Glasgow is chronically underfunded. Schemes like the City Deal help to some extent, although not enough to maintain the cleanliness of the streets, and not enough to prevent the decay of many of the city’s buildings, and not enough to protect its parks, and not enough, apparently, to build a path on the south side of the river.

Perhaps there’s still some hope: the council says it’s “open to working with relevant parties in the future to help find a solution”. It also says it wants to “develop the river corridor into an attractive urban quarter” and it has that potential. But we know the score here don’t we? It’s not going to happen without a consistent plan. Or a change to the way the city is funded. And it’s not going to happen without more money.