AS your editorial reminded us, George Square has been subjected over the past half-century to a succession of piecemeal and ill-conceived modifications that have reduced it to a parody of the elegant, life-enhancing civic space it used to be ("Make George Square fit for 21st century", Herald leader, September 17).

Encircled by a relentless flow of deafening traffic, and devoid of any meaningful spatial aesthetic, it leaves its monuments stranded in a soul-sapping expanse of gaudy red asphalt. The time for half-baked solutions to the problem of George Square is over. Nothing short of a radical re-invention as a genuinely 21st century public space is required, and if this means imagining new homes for its monuments then so be it; this is a nettle that will have to be grasped.

As George Square developed over time, statues were brought in from elsewhere as and when they were needed, or removed to other locations when judged they would be more effective elsewhere. Within the square itself there have been at least two major reshuffles. We can celebrate history without becoming locked into a sentimental attachment to the past for its own sake, or a blind acceptance of the status quo. Times change, and cities have to change with them.

The subject has already generated a lively exchange of views on your Letters Pages (September 14, 15, 17, 18 & 19), though there have been errors and flawed logic. We read with astonishment, for example, the claim that the statue of David Livingstone has been "hidden away on Cathedral Square". This is absurd. Cathedral Square is not only a brilliant example of how an existing space can be re-energised by contemporary urban design, but also remains one of the most venerated historical sites in the city. Go to the top of the High Street any evening and look at Livingstone spot-lit against the background of the Cathedral. Is there a more beautifully sited monument anywhere in the UK? And one of the reasons it looks so good is because it has just been cleaned and renovated as part of a major conservation programme that has encompassed (so far) eight of our city-centre monuments, among which is Sir Walter Scott, the venerable author of Waverley. All this is from a bunch of council numpties who, we are told, know nothing and care even less about the historic monuments in their charge.

There have been mistakes, of course. The re-siting of Sandy Stoddart's Mercurial on John Street was a heavy-handed error of judgment, and a violation of the integrity of a major living artist. But it remains a rare exception. Besides, we are dealing now with an integrated programme of improvements that opens the prospect of transforming the heart of Glasgow into a civic space that will be the envy of the world. We have waited too long for this; we cannot let the opportunity slip.

The proposal as it stands is not to empty George Square of its statues, but merely to establish the principle that it may be necessary to remove some or all them if a world-class design for the space requires that this should be so. And if that happens it will not be the calamity some have predicted. The relocation of the statues will be a gain for the city, as the task of finding relevant sites for the bronze poets, politicians and scientists corralled in front of the City Chambers obliges us to develop a deeper understanding of our history and a better grasp of how that history manifests itself in urban space. It seems safe to predict that the public debate on this will run and run, and that the opposition will increase in ferocity. Our message to the city council is: keep a cool head and steady nerves for the onslaught to come. Together we can get this thing done, and Glasgow will be an immeasurably better place for it.

Dawn Durrant,

David Harding,

Simon Paterson,

Ray McKenzie,

21 Campsie Road, Milton of Campsie.

THERE are other Glasgow priorities aside from George Square. Back in the cruel 1930s, Lewis Grassic Gibbon published an essay, Glasgow, with Hugh MacDiarmid. He was deeply concerned with the human misery to be found in the 150,000 who lived in the Gorbals. He wrote:

"I find I am by way of being an intellectual myself. I meet and talk with many people whose interests are art and letters and music. Enthusiasm for this or that aspect of craft and architecture, men and women who have very warm and sincere beliefs regarding the ancient culture of Scotland, people to whom Glasgow is the Hunterian Museum with its fine array of Roam Coins, or the Galleries with their equally fine array of pictures. 'Culture' is the motif-word of the conversation: ancient Scots culture, future Scots culture, culture ad lib and ad nauseam-The patter is as intimate on my tongue as on theirs."

Then he comes to his angry conclusion: "But relevant to the fate and being of these 150,000 it is no more than the chatter and scratch of a band of apes, seated in a pit on a midden of corpses. There is nothing in culture and art that is worth the life and elementary happiness of one of those thousands who rot in Glasgow slums."

I am grateful to Neil Davidson's The Origins of Scottish Nationhood for providing the passage.

We will be inviting 70-plus countries to the east end of Glasgow in 2014 to find that suicide rates and crime rates are some of the highest in the UK; the poor are more likely to die of alcohol-related deaths than anywhere else in the UK, and public health officials predict that both drug and alcohol-related deaths will double in the next 20 years.

When we read from the World Health Organisation that men in parts of the east end have a life expectancy of 54 while in parts of the west end it is 80-plus then we must prioritise our concerns. George Square can wait.

Thom Cross,

64 Market Place, Carluke.