Yesterday went too soon

As none of you will have noticed, I am just back from an overseas holiday. A fine holiday it was, too – tucked away on the cusp of Europe and the Middle East, in a resort so posh that I hired a butler one day to bring me pina coladas and ice creams on demand. It was all jolly hockey sticks, much sunshine was absorbed, and everyone came home happy, although in my case, I came home far too soon. Isn’t that always the way with holidays?

The rapid passage of this decidedly welcome break has raised an historic bone of contention, however – the truly awful state of the nation’s airports. I posit this thesis because Glasgow Airport is proudly emblazoned in “Scotland with Style” banners, and it provides the first impression many people will have of our fait land. Yet in the brief time I was there, I was flanked by one crowd of boisterous neds after another, the urinals were all blocked up with piss, the shops were all shut, and the staff wore expressions so hangdog that I don’t think I could have shaken off their collective torpor if I’d vomited fruit pastilles over them and then spontaneously combusted. Actually, I probably shouldn’t mention combustion in the same paragraph as airports – certain people are quite twitchy about such linguistic juxtapositions. Hi to the web traffic monitoring officials at RAF Menwith Hill, who are probably logging onto this site two paragraphs in, but rest assured, lads, you haven’t missed much.

Contrast Glasgow’s fraught ambience with Antalya airport, on the southern coast of Turkey. Admittedly, I did pull a door handle off its loose hinges, and the tannoy announcer was almost indecipherable over the mumblings of sleepy passengers, but otherwise, Antalya provides an object lesson in how to transport large numbers of people quickly and effectively, without irritating them to the point of apoplexy. Efficient and friendly security staff rapidly screened everyone at the main entrance, before an enthusiastic check-in assistant processed our bags at one of the 12 desks dedicated to our flight, and then after a brief additional security check, we were free to walk around a huge, circular departure lounge with each gate conveniently placed around the edges of the circle, rather than hidden away beyond six miles of blank corridors and travelators (I’m looking at you, Heathrow). There was good food available in the 24-hour restaurants (unlike Luton Airport, which effectively closes down after 8.30pm), the buses dropped people off right outside the terminal (no anti-terrorist barriers here to cause confusion and inconvenience), and our flight took off on time because there are three runways (count ‘em! Three!) to channel planes in and out with minimal queuing.

It was, quite honestly, embarrassing to be British in such a situation. And nor is it only Turkey that shames our air transport hubs. Consider the architectural grandeur of Schiphol in Amsterdam, the metronomic efficiency of Tokyo’s Narita and Haneda airports, or the sheer magnificence of Changi in Singapore, which has been voted the world’s best airport this year after finishing as runner-up in the 2012 World Airport Awards. It really does make you wonder what the tourists flocking to Glasgow next year for the XX Commonwealth Games will make of our country, when they first arrive. If I was them, I’d turn around and go straight back to wherever I came from. When I say there’s no place like home, I don’t necessarily mean it as a compliment, especially in terms of our tired and basic airports. And don't even get me started on "Glasgow" Prestwick...

Mental blocks

Anyone who’s ever visited Glasgow will know that this (mostly) glorious city is liberally festooned with tower blocks. Rising above the rooftops of everything around them, these concrete monoliths have become sadly iconic of the city’s 20^th century malaise. They are despised by traditionalists who still resent them for supplanting old tenements, despised by snobs and people from Edinburgh as junkie-ridden hellholes, and despised by a thousand former tenants for the crimes that occurred within their slab-like walls. These former symbols of a brave new city have become anachronistic amid Glasgow’s Victorian splendour and modern aesthetics – a grey and gloomy testament to Le Corbusier’s failed status as a visionary. And so it is that Glasgow’s eponymous housing agency is tearing down tower blocks as fast as it can, replacing them with high-calibre low-rise tenements that people are clamouring to live in.

As a keen student of architecture, I shed no tears for the mass departure of these Brutalist edifices. Ibrox and Govan used to have nine tower blocks, but by the end of 2013, only one will be left standing, and Govan in particular can only be improved as a consequence. Laurieston loses its last two towers later this summer, the iconic Red Road skyscrapers will be razed by 2017, and so will blocks in a dozen other suburbs throughout Glasgow. Their replacements will be far more suited to modern life, and much prettier to boot. Only one aspect of this renaissance troubles me – the knowledge that, in principle at least, there is nothing wrong with living in a tower block.

I know this because I lived in high-rise buildings for two years, and I loved it. The views were amazing, the rooms were spacious, the lack of a garden wasn’t an issue when you have a balcony, and you soon get used to shuttling your groceries about in a lift. However, the difference between these tower blocks and many others is that my former residences were constructed by housebuilders rather than housing associations, and every property was either owned outright or let to tenants affluent enough to afford the (fittingly high) rents. People in more expensive buildings generally take more care of their surroundings, and so it proved on both occasions. Yes, there were issues and irritations caused by communal living, but by and large, both buildings remained clean and respectable, populated by people who probably weren’t model citizens but certainly didn’t shit on their own doorsteps, literally or metaphorically. Indeed, the biggest problem associated with my first high-rise residence was ongoing vandalism caused by youths from the council tower blocks across the road. I’m sorry, but it’s true. We cared about our building, but they didn’t.

And that, in a nutshell, is where Glasgow’s state-sponsored tower blocks figuratively fell down – they were populated with too many people who just didn’t care. Didn’t care if they overfilled the rubbish chutes, which then jammed, and stank. Didn’t care if their kids played with matches in the stairwells and caused everyone to be evacuated while the fire brigade rushed over. Didn’t care if they left rusting prams in lobbies, or pissed in the lifts, or dropped needles on the grass where children wanted to play, or attacked people from the next scheme just because they were from the next scheme. And as a result of this, issues like the lack of soundproofing became more of a problem, because some people didn’t give a toss whether the elderly widow next door was forced to listen to dance music at 2am. People have the most extraordinary ability to ruin things for each other, either through deliberate actions or culpable apathy, and as a direct consequence, Glasgow regularly reverberates to dull booms as hundreds of homes and millions of memories are erased from its skyline.

It frustrates me, it really does. I’ve seen low-rise housing estates with greater social problems than some of the tower blocks that are being blown down, and I could even name a few council towers that are genuinely sought after among local residents - it’s all about the mentality of the people who live there. That’s why one council estate in my former home town had a ten-year waiting list for a house, while another scheme had plenty of empty properties because few people were willing to put up with the brazen drug dealers, feral dogs and sneering vandals. On an architectural level, the continuing demolition of Glasgow’s high-rise housing stock is a blessing, but these tower blocks don’t really deserve the criticism they receive. Buildings are rarely at fault – it’s their occupants who make or break them.