Mhairi Love looks at the case for asset based community development in the North-East of Glasgow through mapping derelict and vacant sites in the area and looking at how the Community Empowerment Act could be utilised.
Credits—Mhairi Love
Download NowGlasgow North East is an area of multiple deprivation. It is no stretch of the imagination to consider that regeneration strategies in Glasgow have not worked for the most deprived areas. For example, Possilpark, in the northern area of the constituency, has consistently ranked as one of the lowest scoring areas of multiple deprivation since it started being monitored by the Scottish Government in
2006.
Socioeconomic inequality, which is ingrained and persistent, needs an approach which directly challenges the status quo. The Asset Based Community Development approach utilises an alternative perspective: what if we look at the area not as a problem, but as an opportunity?
KEY POINTS
― North East Glasgow is an area of multiple deprivation, intensified by systemic neglect of investment and development.
― It has suffered a “toxic combination” of neglect at local authority level and successive policies from the Scottish Government of overlooking the area in favour of top down “regeneration” schemes that have been described as “capitulating to neoliberalism”.
― This report has mapped and photographed areas of underused, derelict and neglected land in North East Glasgow
― It makes the case that communities should be empowered and enabled to take over and develop these areas in ways that best benefit them.
― Tools like Asset Transfer Requests already exist to make this possible but could be made easier to use.
― To make this proposal a success, resources have to be put in place to make sure that communities understand their rights and that landowners understand their obligations.