Glasgow is one of the UK’s most visited cities and also held the very popular Glasgow garden festival in 1988, and was the European city of culture in 1990, and was titled the UK city of architecture and design in 1999 and has over three million tourists from all over the world visit each year.
By the later 12th centuary Glasgow’s population had reached around 1,500, making it an important settlement. In the year of 1450 Glasgow Green became Glasgow’s first public park. In 1471, Provand’s Lordship, Glasgow’s oldest house was built, directly opposite the Cathedral building.
By 1730 Glasgow’s tobacco lords had taken over the market and in the process had become Scotland’s first millionaires. By the end of the 18th centuary Glasgow had become Britain’s biggest importer of sugar.
The transport developed most recently in Glasgow has been particularly successful such as the Kingston Bridge, the Clyde tunnel and the M74. The Kingston Bridge was built across the river Clyde in the city centre at Anderston between 1967 and 1970. It joins the east M8 motorway, and when built was the longest bridge in Scotland. The Kingston bridge is the busiest part of road in Europe with up to 170, 000 cars using it daily. This huge bridge created some structural problems and £31.5m was spent over seven years on repair work, with engineers raising the bridge, building new supports and lowering the bridge again.
The M74 extension is expected to slow down the congestion and also make it easier to travel to Glasgow airport. Although it is expected to cost between £350m and £500m, and will not be scheduled to reopen until 2008.
Connecting the north and the south of the country is the Clyde tunnel, which runs under the river Clyde from Govan to Whiteinch. It was opened in 1963 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Immediately after the Second World War Glasgow faced a major housing crisis. In 1947 a group representing Glasgow visited Marseilles to see the new tower blocks designed by a French architect Le Corbusier and the high rise flats were then introduced to Glasgow. However once built, the planners had failed to realise that these flats were not suitable for all environments and people. Very rapidly many of the high rise flats weakened into grubby and damp homes which resulted in people falling ill etc and soon many had to be demolished.
Glasgow, is a very successful, busy city with beautiful countryside which today, attracts people from all over the world.