City of Art

Edge City

The writer Joel Garreau coined the term 'edge city' to describe a suburban area which, through commercial activity, is able to break away from the more illustrious and more crowded city centre. The reputation of an edge city stems from its ability to transcend the cultural context of the urban area that it borders. Glasgow's current renaissance is reminiscent of Garreau's idea: like many provincial cities in the post-industrial age, Glasgow is seeking to break away from its image of economic insecurity and urban decay. What is most remarkable is that it is using the arts to do so. Indeed, what exists in Glasgow today is a new and empowering level of cultural awareness, one which is conferring a new identity onto a city and which distances itself from the post-industrial decline with which it has been associated. It has succeeded in transforming itself into a vibrant cultural centre.

Paula Michel of the Harmony Arts Council said, "We seek the arts at the core of everyday lives. We simply want a more solid community, a well-rounded community, beauty in our lives." Glasgow's arts-based regeneration programme contained this clear and concise revitalization strategy based on iconic buildings, cultural clusters, and the creative classes; the vision of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander Thompson who used form to shed light on the secret depths and wonderment as the infrastructure to a new betterment. The critical ingredient of art is necessary to build long-term stable urban communities. Perhaps inevitably, the arts activities affect, and are affected by, the community itself.

Making things happen

Glasgow's flourishing arts community is the largest in the United Kingdom outside of London. The embrace of this community has established the reputation of Glasgow, and has enhanced a sense of belonging and of place, aiming to strengthen social cohesion by creating greater levels of cultural diversity. The arts also bridged differences and encouraged reconciliation in instances of identity, sectarianism and territorialism. For some in the city the arts provide an amenity for visitors and thus contribute to the economic pulse of the city. For others, the arts are valued primarily for personal enjoyment and for the enhancement of the overall quality of life. Fundamentally, the point of art is that it should make things happen.

The streets of Glasgow implacably compels lateral thinking to delve deeper and ever deeper into the uncomfortable in order to find the fuel of creativity, sometimes in quite conceptual ways. The fascinating people, romantic and wise, attitudes and values that were grounded in an acceptance of differences, offer a welcoming openness, and a grounded pride of place. Moments of intimacy, greatness and banality, desires and choices that contradict one another, as well as a hidden conscience that everything is possible. The city can present to the world a new and thriving cultural identity, 'The New Scottish Enlightenment'.