A Glasgow urban design consultancy has criticised plans to demolish tenement housing in Port Glasgow.

Willie Miller, of Willie Miller Urban Design, has been discussing plans to demolish parts of Clune Park which have fallen below standard.

He said: "The buildings themselves do represent energy and a resource but they also represent a failure by the Council to manage this resource properly coupled with a more general failure of society and its institutions to support the existing community and encourage it to act differently."

Mr Miller made the comments in Urban Realm magazine.

Clune Park is an area of traditional tenement housing which comprises of a mix of bedsits, one bed and two bed flats.


"For me the fundamental questions around the Clune Park area are to do with the community interest (or perhaps the lack of it) and the waste of resources and energy associated with demolishing the buildings," he said

"Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places but there seems to be little opposition to this and hardly any community ambition to turn the area into something else, either through another refurbishment or through demolition and rebuilding.

"If that is the case and the community don’t really care about the future of the area that sends out a disturbing message not just about the current state of the area but about its future in whatever form that might take," Mr Miller added.

"In some ways, the area represents an old way of building which many could feel sentimental about - good solid stone buildings, the social closes, the overlooked safe back gardens, the cul-de-sac streets where children can play without road safety issues. Yet it isn’t really like that at all and it certainly isn’t about design or aesthetics. It is detached from the surrounding area, beside a noisy trunk road with all manner of social issues.

"If there isn’t the desire or pressure to deal with the issues around the current community or any sort of drive from within the area to change it then it is a lost cause."

(IT)