Glasgow's Urban Problems
There are various geological factors that led to Glasgow’s importance.
One factor was that Glasgow was heavily resourced with iron and coal
and these are the two main ingredients when producing steel. This
steel is then used for many things such as railways (e.g. The Clyde
Tunnel, 1963), bridge building (e.g. Kingston Bridge, 1970) and most
importantly shipbuilding. Another factor that led to the importance of
Glasgow is that it is situated on the River Clyde; a very deep and
wide river. These two combined together, led to a large ship building
industry producing in Glasgow and many businesses starting up in this
kind of work.
However Glasgow soon began to encounter various problems. One problem
in Glasgow at this time was the living conditions. The worst part of
housing in Glasgow was the Gorbals. They were damp, smelly, infested,
and largely overcrowded and these poor conditions led on to various
other problems such as: drugs, alcohol, prostitution, vandalism,
racism, vagrancy, and vandalism. There was also a lot of illness and
disease in these slums during this time, mainly due to the
overcrowding, because things spread so quickly from person to person.
Another type of housing in Glasgow was a tenement; these were the
shady side of Glasgow’s prosperity and were mainly accommodated by
people that moved into town from the country to work in the
shipbuilding industry. These were sometimes in such a poor state they
fall down while people were living inside them resulting in a high
number of tragic deaths. The city was said to be in a state of inner
city decay.
Another problem was that Glasgow relied mainly on World economy for
buying and selling goods, therefore when the great depression happened
in 1929 many businesses were forced out of business and therefore
closed down. This was an especially big problem to Glasgow because
this was the main type of industry, and therefore there were many
people out of jobs. This led to a massive decline in heavy industry,
such as shipbuilding, which located elsewhere where labour was