Contemporary Challenge for British Cities: GlasgowAuthor(s): Allan M. FindlaySource: Area, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1990), pp. 189-190Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002834 .

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IBG Annual Conference 189

Contemporary challenge for British cities: Glasgow

Given the main theme of the plenary session of the 1990 annual conference (Urban Regeneration and Regional Development), it was highly appropriate that one of the Urban Geography Study Group sessions was devoted to considering the challenges facing Glasgow in its year as Cultural Capital of Europe. Contemporary Glasgow inevitably reflects its historical position as second city of the British Empire. This heritage has traditionally been interpreted as a handicap given the urban problems associated with industrial decline and restructuring.

In the first paper of the session, Pacione (Strathclyde) contended that post-war Glasgow had made some advances in tackling the problems of the urban poor in the inner city, but reported that poverty and deprivation remained the hallmarks of the city's peripheral estates. While few

would disagree with this analysis, the debate which followed his paper indicated a considerable divergence of opinion over what policy options were appropriate, and indeed were being taken, to deal with the problems of public and private rented housing in the city. In the owner-occupied sector it has also been argued that shortages of stock have been a barrier to the city's recent evolution. This view was dismissed by Munro and Symon (Glasgow) on the basis of their recent work on access to the city's executive housing stock by the inwardly mobile sector of the labour market. Forbes (Strathclyde) attempted to relate her survey results on intra-urban moves within Glasgow to a stage model of migration. Amongst the many interesting conclusions arising from the survey was the finding that the attractiveness of particular areas in the city were at least as important in migrants' choice of housing sub-market as was the desire to change house size.

Having listened to the general prescriptions for urban regeneration outlined in the plenary session it was perhaps inevitable that many of those attending the session on Glasgow were interested on the one hand in whether Glasgow's experience of rapid economic and social change in the 1970s and 1980s was a model to be either emulated or avoided, or on the other hand

whether Glasgow as a case study was unique and highly particular. Perhaps predictably, the diverse papers presented in the session gave no single coherent answer. Parr (Glasgow), in examining the city's population structure in terms of its changing density gradient, provided evidence of considerable communality between Glasgow and other British cities. Farquhar (Glasgow District Council) argued that firms relocating in Glasgow came to the city either because of some previous functional linkage or because of the ready availability of appropriate and relatively cheap, and loyal staff. These locational factors scarcely distinguished Glasgow from many other northern cities. Davies and Sparks (Stirling) showed that most of the forces

which had been responsible for restructuring retailing in other British cities had also been operating in Glasgow during the 1970s and 1980s, even although planning authorities in the city and in Strathclyde region had been more vigorous than in many other areas in trying to sustain city-centre retail functions. Those delegates who attended the conference field trips to central Glasgow also had the chance to see for themselves the impressive new shopping centres which have transformed city-centre retailing in recent years. In social terms, Mercer (Victoria, Canada) showed that Glasgow's ethnic minorities not only had much in common with those of other

British cities in terms of their residential distribution, but also that they were not dissimilar from certain minority groups which he had researched in Vancouver and Seattle.

By contrast with the papers listed above, which tended to see Glasgow's position as one particular manifestation of more general processes, Findlay and Rogerson (Glasgow) argued that quality of life in Glasgow was in certain respects distinctive and different from, although not necessarily better than, that in other British cities. While recent attempts to boost Glasgow's image had undoubtedly had some effect on people's perceptions of the city, there was need both for a greater awareness of what aspects of life quality were generally perceived to be of import ance by specific groups in the population, and also for a more acute evaluation and marketing of those dimensions of quality of life on which Glasgow fares particularly well. Adopting a socio logical perspective Miles and Dunlop (Glasgow) also examined aspects of Asian migrants in

Glasgow, but argued that generalisations about immigrant groups developed from research on English cities could not be applied to the Scottish context. They then proceded to investigate the place and time specific nature of ethnic tensions in Glasgow.

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190 IBG Annual Conference

Clearly the papers in this session covered only a limited, but nevertheless interesting, selection of the important issues facing contemporary Glasgow. Hopefully the session succeeded in challenging geographers to re-examine their own stereo-typed images of Glasgow, and to rediscover for themselves one of Britain's greatest cities.

Allan M Findlay University of Glasgow

Geographical aspects of women's and children's health Given the present buoyancy of research in medical geography it proved not too difficult to arrange a full session of eleven papers that explored ways in which the health of women and children varies from place to place. It also proved possible to structure the day's papers so that we moved from a concern with preventing ill-health among women, to questions of epidemiology in childhood, before concluding with issues of access to health care for children.

Martyn Senior and Sonya Williamson (Salford) reported on the uptake of cervical smear tests, attempting to disentangle the reasons why women might be dissuaded from attending for screening. Their empirical research in Salford suggested that accessibility and mobility factors were not significant constraints and that illness and the varying shades of advice from medical sources were more important. Maggie Pearson and Sue Spencer (General Practice, Liverpool) looked more generally at' Well Woman' clinics in Liverpool and highlighted the real value these facilities offer to women. The irony is that problems identified during such visits mean that the

women are frequently referred back to their GP for medical attention, a GP (frequently male) to whom they have been reluctant to turn in the first place. Una Maclean (Community Medicine, Edinburgh) focused on breast screening in particular, again examining the quite complicated factors which discourage attendance and stressing the role played by mobile clinics in Lothian region.

It was inevitable in a session such as this that some attention would be given to childhood leukaemia. Eric Baijal (Fife Health Board) reported on a case-control study in Fife, which suggested that there was significantly raised incidence in two postcode districts, within one of which lies the Rosyth naval dockyard. More speculatively, Simon Raybould (CURDS, Newcastle) looked at three water supply areas in Tyne and Wear and pointed to raised incidence of leukaemia in some areas that draw water from surface supplies. In another paper that captured headlines, Mary Dobson and Cherry Milton (Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford) deplored the absence of good, national statistics on the incidence of meningococcal meningitis, suggesting that publicity given to cases in Stroud had deflected attention away from building up a comprehensive picture of this serious disease elsewhere in the country.

Mike Coombes (CURDS, Newcastle) presented the preliminary attempts by his research group to build up a detailed profile of child health in Newcastle. The work draws upon the well known research by Townsend, but extends this by adding several layers, incorporating such

measures as road traffic accidents and low birthweight. Graham Bentham (East Anglia) addressed the problem of the rise in infant mortality in England in 1986, suggesting that this was not merely a statistical aberration but was linked to both cold weather and, in particular, poverty. National variations in child dental health were illustrated by Andrew Lovett and Tony Gatrell (Lancaster), who drew attention to associations with social class and fluoridation. They also reported on a more local study (in Lancaster and Blackpool), again illustrating the very marked spatial variations that can arise at small scales. Martyn Senior returned to questions of access to preventative services in presenting a paper with Sue New (Salford) and Tony Gatrell (Lancaster) on immunisation uptake in Salford and Lancaster. Again, geographical factors were not deter rents to attendance; rather, educational attainment and illness of the child at the time of appointment seemed to be significant variables.

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