YOUR analysis (“Turning derelict land into parks proves mixed blessing in the US”, The Herald, June 26) is correct up to a point but is a somewhat simplified view of things.
The High Line in New York allows New Yorkers to keep in touch with old New York in a very special way. Based on old industrial infrastructure, it was always part of a poor industrial landscape.
The High Line, however, has been the catalyst for necessary redevelopment. It is a huge success.
Glasgow, with a shrinking population, does not have the same pressures on land as New York and Chicago.
In need of a coherent tourism offer, the city has an opportunity to do its own “High Line” but differently, with the splendid, and let’s not forget B listed, Graving Docks, under threat by developers hell bent on ruining the urban landscape with more bland flats.
The Graving Docks site, a stunning artefact from our maritime past, developed as a riverside park with designers creating exciting public spaces in, on or around the listed monument itself, could complete the Riverside offer.
There could be a loop incorporating both banks from the Squinty Bridge and the new Govan Bridge.
Such a development could provide fitting homes for the Queen Mary and Waverley, a new tourism focus for Glasgow, a new life for the upper reaches of the Clyde and jobs for the people of Govan.
John Dunlop,
9 Birnam Crescent,
Glasgow.
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