The angry and bewildered response of many in Glasgow to the announcement earlier this year that the organisers of the Commonwealth Games planned to blow up the Red Road Flats as part of the opening ceremony demonstrated what a complicated relationship Glaswegians have with the buildings.

It would be hard to find anyone who thinks the Red Road flats were a success, but at the same time, the news that the last residents will be moving out in the next few weeks is likely to raise some mixed emotions.

For the asylum seekers living in the one building still in use, the end of the flats at least holds out the hope of some improvement in their living conditions. The idea of blowing the flats up during the Games was always most insensitive to the 200 or so asylum seekers who would have had to watch the other buildings come down, but Red Road was also a poor reflection on how the UK treats those who come here to claim asylum. The Red Road residents will now be housed in a hostel until new accommodation is ready.

The decision to move the asylum seekers on will also hasten the destruction of the flats and the end of a complicated story of social change. The most recent chapter in that story has been grim, but many Glaswegians will remember its happier beginning in the 1960s when the flats were built as a solution to the problem of overcrowding and poor living conditions in other parts of the city. Indeed, for many of those who moved to Red Road, the flats, with their inside toilets, represented an improvement on what they had.

To its credit, Glasgow City Council has tried other options, such as marketing the flats to students and professionals. But the Red Road reputation has stuck and destruction became the only realistic option.

Once they have come down, the focus should be on avoiding the mistakes of Red Road and improving the availability and quality of social housing across the city. One piece of good news yesterday was that Thenue Housing Association, which is based in the Bridgeton and Dalmarnock area of the city, will be acquiring 200 houses in the Commonwealth Games Athletes Village and will develop them for social renting.

But if the end of the Red Road flats demonstrates anything, it is that the balance of affordable housing is still not right in Scotland. More than 50 years after thousands of Glaswegians moved to Red Road, there is a need for affordable housing across the country and a particularly acute shortage of good social housing.

The social housing in the former Athletes Village will help, as will the end of the right-to-buy, but there has been a chronic shortage of investment in social housing and only more funding from the Scottish Government will help rebuild a healthy sector. Some time soon, the Red Road flats will come down in a cloud of dust. Something more positive should rise up in their place.