Whether it was for the greater good or not, the motorway changed areas of Glasgow beyond recognition. Buildings were demolished and long-established communities were displaced forcing friends, neighbours and relatives to spread out far and wide.
Glasgow city engineer Robert Bruce delivered his First Planning Report to The Highways and Planning Committee in March 1945. His radical proposals would transform Glasgow - how people would live, where they would work, how the city centre could be developed, and how people could travel across the city. In June 1965, Scott, Wilson, Kirkpatrick and Partners produced A Highway Plan for Glasgow - a definitive outline for the city’s road network for decades to come. The Glasgow inner city section of the M8 was constructed between 1968 and 1972 The once heavily-populated areas of Townhead, Cowcaddens, Charing Cross, Anderston and Kinning Park would never be the same again.
Here we take a look at those areas and how the M8 changed them forever.
1. Cowcaddens
Phoenix Park in Cowcaddens, 1930. The Corporation of Glasgow created the park on the site of the Phoenix Foundry, one of Glasgow’s oldest iron foundries who produced the main entrance gates to the Necropolis. The park was swept away when the area was cleared during the building of the M8. | Glasgow Archives
2. Anderston
Situated south of Charing Cross is Anderston, on the north shore of the Clyde. The old Anderston was flattened for the M8. Scores of high-density tenement-laden streets, including the ancient five-way-junction at Anderston Cross, were swept away for what was originally intended to be the western flank of the Inner Ring Road. In 1950 Anderston had 32,000 residents, but within just 20 years more than two thirds of them had been relocated to new ‘villages in the sky’; the high rise blocks which were being constructed on the outskirts of the city and beyond. Photo: TSPL
3. Townhead
Within just a decade of the CDA declaration, an area once teeming with young working families and vital industry had been replaced with a construction site and a massive motorway interchange. The population of Townhead by the end of the 20th century was around 8,000, less than half the number of people who had lived there a generation before. Photo: TSPL
4. Charing Cross
For many Glaswegians, the destruction of old Charing Cross for the M8 was an unforgivable act of urban vandalism as it destroyed many fine examples of architecture. Photo: Glasgow Motorway Archive