Glaswegians are used to the sound of an explosion and a building being turned into rubble and dust. You may remember 2014 when there were plans to blow up one of the Red Road blocks as part of the Commonwealth Games celebrations until someone pointed out that destroying flats which used to people’s homes for a moment of flippant entertainment might not be such a good idea after all. Fair point.


But this is what Glasgow does isn’t it? Huge parts of the city were pulled down in the 60s to make way for motorways and to move people from tenements into high-rises. Forty years later, parts of the city were pulled down again when the high-rises were judged to have been a mistake. And we must surely prepare for the next big wave of demolitions in another 40 years when attitudes change again. Build, demolish, build, demolish, build, demolish.


I did think the recent furore over the Wyndford flats in Maryhill might have been a chance to think about whether the build-demolish strategy was the right one and to properly consider what we should do with the high-rises that are left over in Glasgow. The housing association that wants to pull down Wyndford says the flats are in a poor state, a lot of the residents don’t like them, and the 300 or so homes that will replace them will be better (most of them will be social housing; some will be for mid-market rent).


As you may know, a group of campaigners disagree and have been fighting the decision to pull down the high-rises and one of the things they’ve said is that, rather than demolishing the flats with all the environmental destruction and waste that inevitably goes with it, perhaps we should be avoiding the destruction and waste by improving and retro-fitting the buildings that are already there. To me, this seems like one of their most powerful points.


However, it now looks like the housing association has finally got its way. The campaigners had launched a judicial challenge against the city council over its decision to give permission for the demolition without an environmental impact assessment. But the Court of Session has now ruled that the assessment is not required which means the demolition of the four tower blocks can now go ahead. The buildings have already been stripped back ready for the big day. Listen carefully for the explosion. It won’t be long now.


Some of the details of the judgment are interesting. The judge conceded there were various instances in which the potential environmental impact of demolition had been identified but that there would be remedial measures such as the removal of any asbestos before the demolition and various filters and traps to stop material being carried into the River Kelvin nearby. The ruling suggests these measures are enough to overcome the need for an environmental impact assessment.

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No doubt, the arguments over that will continue, but what’s really going on here is clear. Even though the concerns about the environment were genuine, the campaigners are making a bigger argument about the future of high-rises on the Glasgow landscape and the judicial review was a means of trying to make people – the housing association, the council, all of us – engage with that debate. As it happens, the council has just launched a public consultation on tall buildings which will shape future policy and guidance, but it seems to me like the future of the high-rises is still being shaped partly by the prejudices of the past and a refusal to accept that tower blocks can, and should, be part of Glasgow’s future architecture and community.


This is one of the points that Alan Dunlop, the architect and a fierce supporter of the Wyndford campaigners, has been making from the start. As far as he’s concerned, the judgment means we’re now faced with the destruction of a unique piece of social housing, urban planning and community resource 50 years in the making. Not only that, it will be replaced with what Mr Dunlop quite rightly calls mundane, ubiquitous and anonymous blocks that take no account of the special location or the history of the city and could be mistaken for buildings in Milton Keynes or any other British city.

This seems to me to be one of the critical points here. The tower blocks are part of Glasgow’s story and with some thought and inventive thinking, they could continue to be part of the community in the way you see in Liverpool for instance. There’s a high-rise on the edge of Sefton Park in the Toxteth part of that city that once had a reputation as a place to live only if you wanted easy access to drugs, crime and trouble. But it was renovated and transformed and is now an attractive, affordable place to live in the middle of an appealing, mixed community. We could do the same in Glasgow. We should do the same in Glasgow.


Sadly, given the judgement in the Court of Session the other day, it now looks like the Glasgow battle, the battle of Wyndford, has been lost. The housing association, Wheatley, says the verdict of the Court of Session supported the council’s decision not to order an environmental impact assessment and that the new homes they’re planning will transform the community for the better not only for the people who live there now but for generations to come. And to be fair: there are plenty of residents in Wyndford who would agree with that.


My concern, though, is that we still haven’t really learned the lessons of Glasgow’s past. Walk through Kinning Park. Or the Gorbals. Head to Shields Road. Linger for a moment, if you can bear it, at the point where the Mitchell Library meets the M8. All of it happened when the demolishers got their way and large parts of the city have never really recovered, principally because the socially logical way in which Glasgow grew and spread was disrupted and destroyed and pulled up by the roots.

(Image: The Wyndford campaigners)
So perhaps we could stop it now. Perhaps we could think again about the demolish-build-demolish model that’s failed repeatedly in this city and try a protect-and-maintain model instead. No one’s suggesting the high-rises weren’t problematic in many ways. It’s true as well that some of the people who designed them and have defended them have never actually lived in one, and that some of the people who have actually lived in one no longer want to.


However, something important is going to be lost when we hear another big bang in Glasgow and the Wyndford flats come down in a controlled explosion. Perhaps it’s true that the precautionary measures will mitigate the environmental damage – let’s give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt –  but when the clouds clear, we’ll still be left with the new reality won’t we? Piles of rubble and metal and stone and ash and dust where the buildings once stood. Buildings that were part of this city’s high-rise history. Buildings that could have been saved. Buildings that could have had a future.