The Glasgow Effect

Glaswegians have a 30% higher risk of dying before they are 65 (considered a premature death) than people in comparable de-industrialised cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. They die from the big killers: cancer, heart disease and strokes, as well as the “despair diseases” of drugs, alcohol and suicide. And though they have a higher chance of dying prematurely if they are poor, deaths across all ages and social classes are 15% greater. Economic advancement alone will not save your life here.

Research based on newly released 1970s policy documents suggests Glaswegians’ higher risk of premature death was caused by ‘skimming the cream’ – rehousing skilled workers in new towns, and leaving the poorest behind. The research based on Scottish Office documents released under the 30-year rule shows new towns such as Cumbernauld, East Kilbride and Irvine were populated by Glasgow’s skilled workforce and young families, while the city was left with “the old, the very poor and the almost unemployable”. The research has been endorsed by Sir Harry Burns, formerly the chief medical officer for Scotland, Tom Devine, professor of history at Edinburgh University, and Oxford University geography professor Danny Dorling.

The city’s big four peripheral estates, Pollok, Easterhouse, Drumchapel and Castlemilk at first seemed a good way out of squalor. But it was not the paradise they’d hoped for. Children had to be bussed to outlying areas for their education and there were no shops, pubs, dancing halls or picture houses. Those left in Govan also felt the loss. Families were split up; shops left with fewer customers closed. The heart was ripped out of the area.

For those loath to leave the city’s beating heart there was another option – high-rise living. Once seen as a utopian vision, for many the dream quickly faded. Sighthill was a sought-after area in 1969. But in the 80s drug dealers moved in, working families fled in fright and there was a lack of investment in the flats, which were damp, cold and stigmatised. Eventually, Sighthill became known as a sink estate; somewhere only the desperate would accept a house.  

This was a situation replicated around Glasgow. Almost a third of the city’s high-rises have been cleared in recent years and rebuilding has not kept pace. While many deprived cities suffered from the policies imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s government, the response of Glasgow’s local authorities – which prioritised regeneration of the city centre with style bars, shops and executive flats over repairs and building in the housing schemes – meant it received a double dose of neoliberalism. Home ownership was prioritised over social housing in the 80s. “You would have expected this level of home ownership to have come up against resistance, which it does not,” explains Professor Florian Urban, head of architectural history and urban studies at Glasgow School of Art “And I would have imagined a staunchly leftwing council would have opposed it, but this is not the case.” The city was rebranded, Glasgow’s Miles Better.  But the glossy image didn’t stop people dying young.

In Drumchapel amenities are in short supply; Iceland is the only supermarket in the rundown shopping centre and an application by another chain to move into the area has been blocked. There are plenty of bookies though. And a couple of loan places. Basically they put people into ghettos. That led to problems with gangs because there was nothing else for the young people to do. This area once housed 34,000 in the early 70s. Now with an estimated population of under 13,000 there are swathes of vacant and derelict land. The sense is one of isolation. The schemes of modern Glasgow are often desolate and surrounded by vacant land: 91% of people in Springburn – in the north of the city – live 500 metres from vacant or derelict land; Maryhill – in the west – it’s 85%; and in Shettleston – the east – 74%.  A statistical analysis of Glasgow by Juliana Maantay and Andrew Maroko of City University of New York (CUNY), found a link between poor mental health and the proximity to vacant or derelict link. They also found the effect was lessened when communities had a role in the urban planning process. In Parkhead and Dalmarnock, some of the city’s poorest areas, everyone lives less than 500 metres from vacant or derelict land according to the latest GCPH data. In this area some 40% are claiming out-of-work benefits, 61% are single parent households and almost a third have a disability. The life expectancy for an average man is just 68.

Jim Clark, a senior manager of the Clyde Gateway partnership, tasked with a 20-year regeneration programme, admits vacant land has been one the main challenges. “The sheer cost of decontamination and bringing it back into use was going to take a massive amount of money and the market was never going to take that on.”

In 2014 Glasgow adopted a new slogan – People Make Glasgow. “The slogan says that People Make Glasgow, and the fact is that they do, but Glasgow has not been made for its people,” says co-author of the report and professor of applied social sciences at the University of the West of Scotland “If it had been then we would not see the excess mortality that we do.”