PETER the Parrot was a large grey speaking bird which sat on his perch in Pearson's Store on Victoria Road in Glasgow, and was a useful marketing tool as children would drag their parents into the hardware store to see the parrot, and hopefully the occasional parent would buy something.

"It would swear," an old south-sider fondly recalled.

Peter flew from his mortal life decades ago, and Pearson's Store itself is just a happy memory for folk whose childhood was enhanced by seeing a foul-mouthed African Grey. Being a west-ender myself, the delights of Peter the Parrot passed me by, but I heard about him while on a walking tour of Govanhill at the weekend.

Why would anyone walk around Govanhill, some readers might wonder. Newspaper stories about Govanhill, an area of dense housing to the east of Victoria Road and to the north of Allison Street, just before you reach Queens Park, has attracted lurid headlines about overcrowded flats, gangs of gypsies roaming the streets, and squalid piles of rubbish blocking pavements, making life a misery for many. "If I went there again," said a former resident, "I would clutch my bag tightly."

One person who does not see Govanhill in such a bleak light is artist Lucie Potter, who has recorded the memories of many long-term residents, and weaved them into a walking tour with the tales of the old days coming over your headphones as you follow a leisurely stroll around the area.

You learn that Govanhill has been a rich stew of incoming races for generations after its original existence as a mining community. Jews escaping the Russian empire then arrived, and people still recall the Jewish delis such as Morrison's that brought exoticism to the area. Then came Italians, Irish, Polish, Pakistanis, and now Slovaks and Romanians. Where once was a Jewish deli is now the Kurdistan Mini Market.

But then come the hidden gems. You see Govanhill, because of various dead ends and one way streets, is not somewhere you would normally visit, as the road plan is designed to keep motorists to the main thoroughfares such as Victoria Road. On foot it is different. On the corner of Garturk and Allison streets you can look up and admire a tenement built by "Greek" Thomson, completed in 1875. In Bankhall Street is the eye-catching blue and white tiled Govanhill Picture House with turrets like an Arabian fort, but with weeds as sentries as it is now boarded up awaiting an uncertain future.

After reading the stories of squalid overcrowding, some of the housing is a surprise. There are modern renovated tenements. Smaller rows of houses have their own gardens. A chap is cutting his hedge at the front with electric shears with that buzzing sound which fills hundreds of more suburban areas every weekend.

Then the walking tour takes you to Govanhill Park, originally opened in 1896, and reopened with modern play facilities by Glasgow City Council in 1997. The grass is neatly cut, and a woman is sitting on a rug while leisurely throwing a ball for her dog. Clearly these are the tranquil views of Govanhill which are rarely aired as they do not fit in the narrative of ugliness and danger.

Through the headphones folk talk fondly of the old days of playing "Kick door run fast" which is, well, self-explanatory, and men singing in the back courts for pennies thrown down from the windows, with the occasional prankster heating them first on the range so they could watch the men drop them quickly and curse when they bent to pick them up.

A plaque explains that 1500 tenement homes near the park were renovated and officially reopened by then Tory Minister Lord James Douglas Hamilton in 1990. I always had a soft spot for Lord James. Whenever his official driver was a woman, Lord James, as the perfect gentleman, would try to get out the car and open her door for her while she tried to get out and open his door for him.

Interesting that renovation. The folk heard on the headphones are talking fondly of life there before the tenements were improved. But as one resident tells me: "If you look back at the photographs of the area in the seventies, the back courts were just rubble. The conditions were far far worse than they are now, yet people remember it as a beautiful place."

The tour takes you past a local primary school. A teacher explains that there are 16 nationalities in the school. Immediately you think how difficult that must be. But then she adds something that stops you. "We celebrate the diversity. Not many schools are lucky to have this mix." Which seems to me the crux of Govanhill's issues. You either see this crowded mix as a problem or something to celebrate. I pass a group of about a dozen Roma on a street corner. When I grew up in Glasgow a dozen youths could have been the Maryhill Fleet or the Yoker Toi and passing them could have proven injurious. These Roma are just smoking and chatting and have little interest in asking you which team you support or the more alarming: "Can your mother sew?"

In truth every conurbation needs its Govanhill - an area of cheaper accommodation where incomers can settle, make a living, and possibly later move on as the Jewish community did. Bringing these disparate groups together is difficult, but campaigners such as those that run the Govanhill Baths work hard at it. As Lucie Potter of the walking tour told me: "What is a community? I don't think it is parking your car, switching on your TV and not communicating with your neighbours. In Govanhill there is so much opportunity to experience different cultures, food and music."

Peter the Parrot came from Africa and was made welcome. If we can do it for a parrot, surely we can do it for people.