Will a 'New York solution' help Glasgow's struggling high streets?

I often gaze at the burned-out ABC venue with much regret. We (Hue And Cry) enjoyed filling it out over the years, hanging out there with the likes of Gregory Porter. There seems to be a stalemate between the Glasgow School of Art, and Glasgow City Council, as to whether to restore it or demolish it. (I vote for the former).

Yet the area is still a bonafide music downtown. Nice N Sleazy, Box, The Garage, Broadcast and others pull students, hipsters and musicians in and out (with the legendary King Tut’s on a parallel street).

And if there’s creative destruction here, it’s healthy. The downstairs dive known as The Blue Arrow Jazz Club has become Symbøl, replacing the twang of a double bass with the throb of Dark Bass (all things develop, jazz will find its way back).

Zoom out far enough, and you probably couldn’t imagine a more “creative cluster” – a beehive of gigs fed by the youthful outflows of the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) and the GSA, its Mackintosh Building under painstaking post-fire reconstruction. The art deco pile of the Beresford Hotel enables hundreds of private residents to be at the heart of it all.

We should keep all this in mind, as we tut-tut at the media pictures of boarded-up retail and hospitality outlets on Sauchiehall Street. These are often used to illustrate the current spate of “Glasgow gone to rack and ruin” stories. I would readily suggest that a spirit of rock ’n’ roll (and art) is exactly the solution required.

READ MORE: Wee Ginger Dug: How this week proved double-standards in the indy debate

Before we get to that, the world of property, politics and law would have to meet the swarms of creatives halfway. And that seems to be the proposal from the SNP head of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, in her comments this week about a “New York solution” to neglected storefronts. (This also turns out to have been a Scottish solution, a few years ago quietly dropped from the policy menu.)

So apparently, if you want to force neglectful retail property owners to make something of their establishments – rather than just let them rot – you introduce a law allowing Compulsory Sales Orders (CSOs). In New York, Aitken tells us, CSOs “can say to the owner of a building or a piece of land that has been neglected, that they are not investing in: either do something with it or sell it”.

I asked Aitken online for her source here – no reply by the time of deadline, so I started digging. New York City authorities have anti-warehousing laws, intended to prohibit landlords from keeping residential apartment units vacant and not available for rent.

They have laws to stop smaller commercial tenants from being harassed out of their retail space by landlords. They have licensing opportunities for pop-up shops. There’s something in this mix that Aitken (below) is doubtless referring to.

What would solidify the thrust by city authorities against property owners’ inactivity, is a law at the national level. And in Scotland, it seems that the law was bottled.

The Land Commission produced a detailed paper on CSOs in 2018, substantiating a prior SNP government manifesto commitment. This commitment was dropped post-election, for vague reasons to do with “Brexit”, the “legislative programme”, and possible disharmonies with European-level human rights (a claim refuted by the Land Commission report).

Aitken is reporting that the Scottish Government is now interested in CSOs again, as the rubbish piles up and the wooden boards are nailed on in Glasgow.

But it should be noted that this is another example of radical demands coming from Scottish land reformers, falling on deaf ears in Scottish administrations. Andy Wightman, a Scottish Green MSP in 2018, then called the decision “indefensible”.

Better late than never, I guess. The Land Commission paper is at pains to say that CSOs are not a “punitive” measure, but about reviving commercial activity where none currently exists.

I hope that Glasgow City Council’s policy hotline to the Scottish Government is burning.

READ MORE: Humza Yousaf to 'seriously consider' major change to land reform bill

Though I do wonder: would this devolved law, easily rendered as a threat to property interests, really get past the current ultra-Unionist Tory government?

Assuming they’re not long for power, then we should be preparing for at least some more wriggle room in the development of cities like Glasgow. As Aitken rightly points out, it’s not as if the dear green place isn’t also a dear, gleaming place.

There are three university-attached city business zones being funded, with scores of millions from both the Scottish and UK governments. The Barclays Bank HQ glows like the “flashing ziggurats … chameleons under flak of cloud and sun” mentioned in Edwin Morgan’s great sonnet Clydegrad (except not quite implying the same politics).

Buchanan Street (below) is de-malling itself, with residents being invited back to live in the centre of the city. This shift, putting retail in a secondary position, registers the impact of internet shopping. Not to mention the deep morphing of consuming patterns by Covid, and the rising costs of living under planetary disruption.

Faced with these demanding mega-trends, it felt embarrassing to read recent lamentations about Brian Maule’s Le Chardon d’Or.

As if the closure of a fine-dining restaurant, serving the well-padded and complacent Glasgow bourgeoisie, was an indicator of anything significant.

This is where all the laptop-bearing, wide-eyed, ambitious scruffs, gathered at the funky end of Sauchiehall Street, come in. They represent a resource that can revive the rest of the broadway – and fill other gaps in the city’s smile.

Consumerism is steadily contracting in our climate-and-income-challenged lives, beaching the buildings and spaces that used to be palaces for this activity.

Don’t we need to experiment with new kinds of lifestyles, services and urban spaces, so that we can find different satisfactions than retail therapy? Aren’t the facilities for that sitting right before us?

We want laws strong enough that can make these empty (or emptying) palaces of consumption into zones for social innovation.

Why can’t an old clothes chain store building become an upcycling emporium – not just “already loved” clothes and items, but new ones produced from old materials, fuelled by the design creativity up the road at Garnethill? Why couldn’t former consumer-electronics stores become makershops and mini-manufacturers? Perhaps they could even incubate new products that are designed for longevity and repair, as well as usefully fix what we have. And why couldn’t these rooms also show art, play music, pursue relaxation?

READ MORE: Operators of top Glasgow eateries given permission for new venue

We should certainly roam around other cities in the world, to observe the holistic visions their municipalities have for thriving. I love Rotterdam’s notion of the “city lounge”, integrating the different elements of a city centre for maximum relaxedness.

Berlin has also announced, at the core of its recent (and stunning) €900 million cultural budget, the creation of thousands of artistic and creative “spaces”.

Of course, we hardly have Germany’s revenues. But could a mapping of the unused buildings and undeveloped spaces in Glasgow, across public and private owners and made available to all, at least begin a conversation about the assets we might deploy? And which CSOs (along with other measures) could reclaim them?

See that boarded-up shop? Think of it as a lab-in-waiting for a wellbeing-oriented and regenerative future, waiting to be tinkered and prototyped into life.

We’re not in “Glasvegas” any more, Toto.

It would be great if progress for Scotland’s second city didn’t depend on the old shopping frenzy. Let Glasgow flourish – always. But in many more ways than business as usual.