Reflective Images:
The Case of Urban Regeneration in Glasgow and Bilbao
ADVANCED URBAN DESIGN, CLARA ÁLVAREZ
• Introduction
• Effects of deindustrialization in Glasgow and Bilbao
• The response to decline
• Concluding remarks
Table of contents
Glasgow Bilbao
Introduction: similarities of both cities
• Both share an industrial past as old manufacturing centres on the European periphery
• Both were built over old mines
• Navigable river as a main physical component of their territory and former economy
• In both cases housing deprivation ran parallel with the industrial growth
• Decreasing population in both urban areas as a consequence of desindustrialization
• Attempt to create a service-based economy through the
reconstruction of their image
Effects of deindustralization
• Change in economic sectors and new spatial organization of production
• Restucturing of industry happens more quickly than urban
restructuring, so the industrial-based city cannot assume the change
• Decline of inner cities and growth of outer metropolitan areas and smaller towns, is the most important shift in the geography of
manufacturing since the mid 1960s
Effects of deindustrialization
The diagram above shows how the sectors change over time over three
phases.
• 1914, beginning of the First World War:
Glasgow was still considered the ‘Second City of the Empire’
• 1936, beginning of the Second World War:
Huge demand for the products of heavy industry, restored full employment, hiding the underlying structural problems
• 1945, end of the Second World War:
The British Empire collapses, many Scotish industries unable to compete in world markets, terminal decline
• 1950-on:
Old manufacturing bases of iron and steel. Heavy engineering and shipbuilding rapidly declined. Employment in service industries grew substantially. Manufacturing jobs moved away from the older locations to greenfield sites and peripheric areas within the boundaries of the city
The decline of Glasgow
• Taking into consideration the whole metropolitan area of Glasgow, employment numbers first grew until the early 1970s and then declined. As partly illustrated in Table 1, between 1961 and 1981 employment in manufacturing fell from 387,000 at the beginning of the period to 188,000 20 years later.
• Second half of the 19th Century, First Industrilization of the City:
Based on mining, metallurgy and shipbuilding, closely related to the British demand for iron
• Beginning of 20th Century, vast export trade in iron ore:
The Basque Country became the most dynamic province in Spain: greatest population growth, largest railway system and largest number of ships registered
• 1936-1939, Spanish Civil War:
Protectionist policies
• 1950-1970:
Permanent increase in the number of industrial jobs in Vizcaya, with a very low unemployment rate: 3.2% in 1975.
• 1979-1985:
european industrial crisis, 24% of industrial jobs lost in the Basque Country
• Present Days:
The services sector had not produced enough jobs to make an impact on the unemployment caused by the closure of industrial plants.
Bilbao’s ascent and fall
• If we see it in numbers, we can see that, as mentioned before, The services sector had not produced enough jobs to make an impact on the unemployment caused by the closure of industrial plants.
•
The response to decline
• Poverty, violence and alcoholism were terms constantly associated with the city
• The city’s negative image was a major disincentive to potential investors
• An independent group, consisting of prominent figures in the city and led by local business elites was formed:
Glasgow Action 1985-1991, and Glasgow Development Agency later on
• The new main focus was the city center, its aim was to ‘make the city more attractive to work in, to live in and to play in, to communicate the new reality of Glasgow to its citiziens and to the world’
• Glasgow Action was to lead the drive to attract corporate headquarters to the city, help to develop a local software industry and encourage more local service
industries to export their wares
Glasgow: from manufacturing to services via image-
reconstruction
Glasgow: from manufacturing to services via image-
reconstruction
A new marketing literature promoting was being created
Art, culture and image were the central features in the promotion of a
post-industrial Glasgow during the 1980s.
Bilbao imitating Glasgow
Timetable of important events influencing Bilbao’s
development
Bilbao Ria 2000
• Regenerate two big areas occupied by obsolet industrial installations, port areas and old commercial railways.
• To improve the public transport such as trains, connecting it to the metro lines and build a new merchant station in the comercial port.
• To multiply the environmental quality of the city center, building new green areas and parks, unifying the city and the Ria and making the water edge be accesible and walkable.
Three Objectives Stand Out
1970
1992
2005
2010-2012
New Buildings
Deusto’s Univeristy Library (Rafael Moneo) UPV Auditorium (Alvaro Siza) Iberdrola Tower (Cesar Pelli, 165m)
New Buildings
New Green Areas
Pedro Arrupe Footbridge
Just Art for a Just City:
Public Art and Social Inclusion in Urban Regeneration
ADVANCED URBAN DESIGN, CLARA ÁLVAREZ
Statues of Glasgow: Donald Dewar
The statues commemorate largely forgotten political and military figures of the 19th century and are symptomatic of the ‘imposed monumentalism’ of the
Victorian City. What Lefebvre warned of as the ability of «monumental buildings to mask the will to power and the arbitrariness of power beneath signs and surfaceswhich claim to express collective thought», is given added weight through the impress of time and habituation.
The unveiling (and removal) of Queen Victoria
Statues of Dublin:
Gladstone statue in Hawarden, Wales
Nelson’s Pillar, Dublin
“With the passage of time it became a popular meeting-place and viewing point… and a symbol of the city center that trascended any polittical
connotations “ (Whelan, 2003)
Cultural planning immediately raises the question of
‘culture for whom?’ in which imposition and the favouting of particular interests are likely to engender reaction
and resistance.
To its practitioners, there may be a degree of inevitability here, particulary where the reimagineering of cities has become so focused arounf the winning of mega-events; the focused nature of such events may be incompatible
with the ability to address the diverse set of preferences represented in the city.
Avenue des Champs-Élysées. One of Haussmann’s wide tree-lined boulevards
Public Art is not simply art placed outside. It is art which has as its goal a desire to engage with its audiences and to create
spaces- whether material, virtual or imagines- within which people can identify themselves, perhaps by creating a renewed reflection on community, on the uses of public spaces or on behaviour
within them. Public Art, then, does not only have to be expressed visually, but it has to be with «urban environment» and
«aura of quality», when it comes to urban regeneration.
ParaSITE project, Michael Rakowitz, NYC, 2000
Tilted Arc, Richard Serra, Federal Plaza Manhattan, 1989
Nowadays, there often a spatial and temporal essentialism in defining community, and there is where Art has to act.
Inclusive approaches to designing public art – work-shops, Meetings and so on- can ensure ownership by those in that community and hence encourage care and lessen the
likelihood of vandalism.
A weapon for political and cultural innovations that
will continuosly redefine the city
Banksy Art pieces
Campo de la Cebada, Madrid
