This coming week concludes for me with what teachers probably don't call su­pra-curriculum activities, i.e., stuff I'll be at, wearing my Herald arts editor's hat (a natty fez, since you ask), but not behaving in a journalistic newsgathering fashion.

On Thursday, I am one of chairman Ian Callum's judging panel for The Lighthouse Design Impact Award 2014, the sort of task I last undertook 15 years ago during Glasgow's Year as City of Architecture and Design, and for which Jaguar's design director thankfully also has more qualified folk, like V&A Dundee director Philip Long and Ross Hunter of Graven, on board.

Then, on Friday, The Herald and our guests will be at the 2014 Arts & Business Awards as media partner of the event, which is being held in the new foyer space of the Theatre Royal and all the more intriguing for the fact that the Page and Park-designed extension to the Hope Street opera house is not quite as complete as was intended. As far as I know I will not have to swap the fez for a hard hat at the door.

The juxtaposition of the two events set me thinking about the design challenge that is the city of Glasgow. The shiny new turret at the north end of the theatre is just one of many cultural developments at the top of the town where The Herald office is also located.

Along the road, between the existing Concert Hall building and John Lewis, the RSNO's new home is taking shape on another site that has proved challenging for the contractors, but about which the wider Scottish musical world is excited for its potential as a full-size orchestral recording studio, which the nation does not as yet possess.

With the Arts School's new building, a new home for the National Theatre of Scotland and the growth of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland all happening round about, this neighbourhood has become the city's cultural quarter. The difficulty is that it straddles a motorway and is at a remove from the city centre. But then so is the riverside development of shiny entertainment venues that was such a stunning backdrop for the BBC's coverage of the Commonwealth Games.

There are many parts of Glasgow that look good, but they are separated by other bits that really don't, and there is little coherence about the experience of being in the city. Don't take my word for it, ask the befuddled visitor I directed to Charing Cross station from the Mitchell Library the other day.

Cities in England, like Manchester, are now seizing the devolution agenda to argue for more fiscal autonomy from Westminster, and have the urban partnership bodies in place to capitalise. Here, the Glasgow Development Agency is a distant memory, and Holyrood stands accused of diminishing the power of local government in a way that parallels the hegemony of Westminster.

Urban design is a cultural issue that requires a grasp of the bigger picture: does Glasgow have the right people working on making the city's form suit its future function?