IT’S 1969, and the Anderston area of Glasgow is undergoing a redevelopment plan that truly merited the description ‘comprehensive’.

Through Anderston the west flank of the city’s inner ring road cuts a swathe linking the Kingston Bridge (above) to Charing Cross.

As this newspaper’s Claude Thomson noted in January 1969, Glasgow Corporation’s decision to make a clean sweep of almost all the property in Anderston had led to a lengthy legal process of public inquiries and compulsory purchase orders.

The clearance began in 1964 (2826 houses had so far been demolished) and the new Anderston should be complete by 1974 or 1976, the Herald added.

The redevelopment area covers 114 acres bounded by Blythswood Street and Douglas Street in the east, St Vincent Street in the north, Finnieston Street in the west, and Stobcross Street and Argyle Street in the south.

Read more: Herald Diary

“When it is completed,” Thomson wrote, “it will be a new town within the city, with its local shops as well as its department stores and supermarkets, and its local public houses, as well as a huge hotel.”

In 1958, when Anderston’s population was 11,500, a mere nine per cent of its 3376 houses were classified as fully acceptable. The new Anderston would have 1065 houses, many of them in high-rises of up to 25 storeys, and a population of 4,000.