I’m going to be honest here: when I first saw the new bridge going up between Govan and Partick, I wasn’t happy. The project includes a new plaza on the south side with flats and space for shops and everything. But the problem as far as I was concerned was it blocked the great view across the river to the transport museum. But this is how it always goes with big projects in Scotland isn’t it? It starts with a grumble.

But then I actually visited the site, first on the north side near the museum, then on the south at Govan and spoke to some of the people involved and some of the local folk who’ve been asking for a new bridge on this part of the river forever and ever. In the 60s, when we thought the car was the answer to everything (some people still think that), the Clyde Tunnel was built, the Partick-Govan ferry was shut down, and an important connection between two communities was severed.

The consequences were serious. One of the Govanites I spoke to was Pat Cassidy, who runs the social enterprise Govan Workspace. In 2017, he also ran a temporary ferry across the river for a couple of months to see what the demand would be like. Answer: big. The ferry could seat 12 people but in the time it was running, 35,000 used it. So there you are.

Pat also put the wider effects of Govan’s disconnection in context for me. The community would have probably disappeared if local people hadn’t stood up for it back in the 70s, he told me. It was back then that the housing association movement was born, and people said ‘no, we’re not going, we want our tenements refurbished,’ and it was a turning point for Govan and it didn’t disappear. Since then, housing has been central to the regeneration of the area and, with a little help from the bridge, it can continue to be so.

But there’s also something else at work here, something more profound really about our attitude to the Clyde. Another of the people I spoke to down by the bridge talked about the concept of blue spaces – similar to green spaces like parks but built around water and rivers. The only problem is that, because of its industrial past, Glasgow effectively turned away from the river when the industry shut down. Pat put it this way: “we turned our back on the river and thought of it as a sewer.”

The bridge could be part of changing that and I urge you to go down and see it when it opens to the public this Saturday because it’s a very fine thing. And when you’re walking across, perhaps you could think about these little facts: it came in on time and it came in on budget (£29.5m). It’s also an example of the UK and Scottish governments working together, like frenemies who secretly like each other, on a project that has real, and potentially very long-lasting merit.

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The theory is pretty simple in a way. You build some infrastructure, in this case a bridge, with the aim of encouraging positive effects on community, on jobs, business, and investment. The people I spoke to at the bridge said they hoped it would work both ways: there’s a good chance, for example, that more students will live in Govan and cross the bridge to university. There’s also a very good chance that the thousands of visitors who come to the transport museum will stroll across the river and have something to eat, and look around, and go to the amazing shops (best one: Magpie’s Nest) or go and see the Govan Old Stones (do it, they’re extraordinary).

Naturally, there is some scepticism. £29.5m is a lot of money to spend on a big metal bridge and I suggested to its supporters that the money might have been better spent directly on projects to help people in Govan, where there’s serious deprivation, and in Partick, where it’s maybe a little more hidden but still exists. The answer I got was spending the money that way would be a short-term solution and the idea of the bridge, at the heart of a network of new connections, is that it’s for the long-term.

Having spoken to people who’ve lived in Govan for 40 years without a bridge, I would say: it’s worth a try. It’s also worth enduring the potential gentrification that will come with it. Some of the grumbling about the bridge and the flats nearby – and I get it – is that they’re too expensive in an area where the vast majority of people live in social housing. But the new flats are very deliberately affordable for young people on relatively low incomes and gentrification is another word for money being spent in the local community, which is a good thing yes?

And there’s another thing that’s hard not to love. I’ve lived in Glasgow for more than 30 years now and I know it pretty well; I’ve been to its best bits and its worst bits. But the bridge has created new ways of seeing the city we love. First, I stood on the north side and looked across to the little plaza in Govan backed by the blocks of flats in brick and steel. It looks good. Then I stood on the south side and looked north through the bridge to the tall ship with Zaha’s zigzag museum in the background. It’s a view I’ve never had before. Look out for it soon on tea towels and mugs and postcards.

(Image: Colin Mearns)

I’d also like to say something positive about how good it is to see a project come together in a city that has some troubles. I’ve written a few times about the buildings we’re losing – flames in the sky? there goes another one. We can also see the litter in the streets, and we can see the state of Sauchiehall Street. And three words: School. Of. Art.

However, as well as all this bad, there is good and it’s down by the river reattaching an old connection that was severed in the 1960s. One of the people I spoke was the formidable Govan campaigner Deirdre Gaughan, who’s been a local councillor and is chair of Central Govan Action Plan which aims to transform the area by attracting investment, and she’s lived in the housing estate near the bridge for 30 years.

Deirdre couldn’t have been clearer about the problem: most of the political power in Glasgow was on the north side of the river, she said, and Govan was neglected for many years and to some extent it’s still happening. But what she was also clear about was the potential of the new bridge. She’s delighted it’s almost finished and ready to go and she believes it will have a profoundly positive effect on the community she loves. “At last,” she told me, “it’s Govan’s turn.” Yes: at last.