Springburn - Regeneration

Regeneration

Springburn continued to see expansion, with the area incorporating housing schemes that were developed in the Interwar period, such as Balornock and also Post-war housing schemes such as those in Balgrayhill, Barmulloch and Sighthill. Barmulloch also included the High rise development at Red Road.

The old urban centre of Springburn was heavily affected by the redevelopment of the area from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Selected as one of Glasgow's "Comprehensive Development Areas", Springburn saw wholesale demolitions and the construction of a sequence of housing estates which transformed the area completely. A major dual carriageway, the A803 Springburn Expressway (originally designed to be the northern link to the aborted Glasgow Inner Ring Road) was completed as late as 1980. The handful of Victorian villas which remain around Balgrayhill and some sandstone tenements in Keppochill and central Springburn are only a fraction of what formed the dense urban community that had gone before. There are however various suburban middle class areas such as Forest Hall, Fernbank and Colston, which were largely unaffected by the revelopment.

The regeneration vision remained incomplete, and by the mid-1980s Springburn had become one of Glasgow's most notorious areas, exacerbated by decaying housing and lack of major employers to replace the decline in the railway industry, despite the creation of North Glasgow College at the former North British Locomotive Company headquarters in 1965. Since then, there has however been further efforts to regenerate the area.

More recently the area of Keppochill Road, which links Springburn with Possilpark, has been regenerated through the work of the West of Scotland Housing Association Ltd, many of the Victorian sandstone tenement flats in Gourlay Street, Carlisle Street and Keppochill Road have been renovated and work continues to maintain and improve housing in the area.

New build developments in recent years has seen Glasgow Housing Association high-rise flats demolished or refurbished and new modern low rise houses built in the area. West of Scotland housing Association now has a head office based at 252 Keppochill Road however the interest of the charitable organisation extends into Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. The most notable surviving architectural feature in this area, the former Public Halls, was opened in 1902 and designed by William B. Whitie, who also designed Springburn's Public Carnegie library. Since closing in the mid-1980s, the Springburn Public Halls have however fallen into a state of chronic dereliction. The Springburn Library building now operates as the Glasgow North Regeneration Agency Conference Centre following a £2m refurbishment.