Go Ape was a good idea, but not in Pollok Park

Go Ape has gone. Eventually the plan to construct a children's tree-top attraction in one of Glasgow's dearest green places was defeated not by the determined and well-supported campaign to stop it but by planning conditions recommended by the National Trust for Scotland.

City parks were conceived as the green lungs of grimy Victorian cities and as alternatives to public houses. They were intended by the new municipalities and the rich philanthropists who donated the land to "make people virtuous and happy".

To some degree that original vision survives in Glasgow, especially during sunny weekends when families still flock to the city parks for a taste of rural life, and commercial developments continue to be frowned upon. In seeking to monetise the city parks, Glasgow councillors seriously underestimated the strength of feeling on this subject. The pastoral idyll of Pollok Park, gifted by the Maxwell family, has always enjoyed a special place among Glaswegians. Like Glasgow Green, it is their own piece of countryside within the city.

When a nightclub was proposed for the Botanic Gardens, the council backed down and rejected the idea in response to the protests of local residents. The same should have happened to Go Ape, given the strength of local opposition, but the council gave the project the green light, following an inadequate consultation.

It remains in doubt whether such developments are permitted on common-good land and whether this one represented good value for either the city or customers. The £20 ticket price would have excluded poorer families, unlike the municipal playparks, which are all free.

Children need more adventurous play in these safety-conscious times and such a facility would be a welcome addition to what Glasgow has to offer young people, but Pollok Park was always the wrong location. Yet without the intervention of the NTS, it would have gone ahead. It is a shame the company and the council took so long to park their plans.