SINCE he was operating almost 300 feet up without a safety net one might have thought the crowd would have been bigger. But that is Glasgow for you: hard to impress. Still, some 2,000 turned out on a Sunday afternoon in 2007 to watch Didier Pasquette attempt to walk on a high wire between three of the Red Road flats. Part way along, as the line began to sway violently, he turned back.

The experts who had advised him surely did not include locals of a certain age and provenance. As these former weans might have told Pasquette, not only is it impossible to fling pieces out of a 20-storey flat, one cannot win a fight with the howling Glasgow wind. Yes, even if it is July.

Tightrope walking between skyscrapers has been on the downturn in recent years, but if there are any budding Pasquettes out there who fancy their chances outside Glasgow they should note that one area is now off the map. As The Herald’s chief reporter David Leask revealed yesterday, North Lanarkshire Council plans to demolish its remaining 48 tower blocks, some 4,000 homes, over the next 20 years and replace them with dwellings a little less near the clouds.

While the tally of 48 does not beat the 90 taken down in Glasgow since 2003, the dear green place remains a high tower hotspot with 123 buildings with 12 or more storeys. A drive along the Clydeside Expressway adds even more towers to the total, as does a walk through the city centre where many student flats continue to be built. All of which makes one wonder if Glasgow knows something North Lanarkshire does not. Which one is behind the trend here, which of the panjandrums of planning are wrong, and how long might it be this time before mistakes are realised?

Glaswegians should be understandably nervous about giving advice to anyone on the way forward in housing. Look at the mess we made. Post-war, as fads and architects came and went, Scotland’s largest city existed in a near-permanent state of building revolution. The city tenements were horror shows of overcrowding and outside toilets, so they were bulldozed and the march of council tenants to the new towns and far-flung estates began.

The estates boasted grass to run on (no wheat fields, alas, Mrs May) and the houses had all mod cons, but there was nothing else for kids to do and nowhere for families to shop. So the lands dubbed “deserts wi windaes” by Billy Connolly were abandoned to themselves. Residents soon found the housing stock, though in most respects better than the slums they had come from, were badly built and soon deteriorated. There was nowhere to go but the (equally badly built) school or the pub, then back to watch the damp spreading across the walls or the running battles between gangs outside. An entire generation’s lives blighted by bad housing. And it is a blight. A child with a refrigerator bedroom is a child who has to do their homework, if they manage it at all, in front of the TV. They are more likely to suffer ill health than their counterparts in better housing. In every way, every day, they are placed at a disadvantage.

Those who refused a ticket out to the desert plains of Easterhouse, Castlemilk and the like, or who found they could not stick the isolation, were housed in the new tower blocks springing up like concrete poppies. Sold as “streets in the sky” these new builds were meant to be the very dab. Offering the same sense of community as the old tenements, albeit vertically, the cons were even more mod, the views were terrific, and you could walk into town or take one of the many buses running a service from just outside the door. It would be just like living in New York. Aye, right.

One of the most famous architects of the time was Sir Basil Spence. In 2011, English Heritage erected at blue plaque for him in Canonbury Place, Islington, London, where he lived and worked. On its website, English Heritage introduces readers to Sir Basil thus: “Public housing was a staple of Spence’s work. His low-rise schemes in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey (1948-49, 1950-52), and at Dunbar, East Lothian (1949-52, 1955-56) won awards. But controversy dogged the twenty-storey twin slab blocks at the Gorbals, Glasgow, known as Hutchesontown ‘C’ (1961-65): they proved difficult and expensive to maintain, and were demolished in 1993.”

Demolished, along with many another development whose names became by-words for decline and hot and cold running urban despair. You can read and see more about Glasgow’s demolition and regeneration at www.disappearing-glasgow.com, a terrific website by photographer and writer Chris Leslie.

What a story Glasgow has to tell. It is a tale of two cities in many ways, where owner-occupiers in the West End improved and maintained their tenements so that they could become the sought after residences they are today. Other home owners move to the ‘burbs and back to the cities once the children are grown up and gone away. Curiously, these city-bound birds never seem to flock to the east end on their return, though I hear that some parts, including Dennistoun, are quite the models of gentrification.

For all the talk of tower blocks versus low level living, this city planner’s vision versus that city planner’s dream, Glasgow can surely teach North Lanarkshire Council, and any other house builder for that matter, one crucial thing: homes are about more than bricks and mortar.

A home is a place that is well-built and warm. A spot where you can be happy and healthy. Where you can talk to your next door neighbour or not, but know that they will be there for you in a pinch. Where good schools and amenities are nearby and children can play safely. Where you can close the door at night and feel secure. If no heart has gone in to building and maintaining a dwelling it will not be a home for long.

None of this should be a tall order given enough money, determination and vision. If North Lanarkshire can supply enough of those then good luck to it and all who sail into its new houses.