The need for management of recent urban change in a developed-world city such as Glasgow and in a developing-world city, including housing, transport and the environment.

What this key area is asking

The SQA wants you to explain the need to manage recent urban change. You study one developed-world city (Glasgow works well) and one developing-world city (Mumbai is a strong choice), and you explain the problems and the matched management strategies for housing, transport and the urban environment. Marks at Higher depend on pairing each problem with a located solution.

Why urban change must be managed

A developed-world city: Glasgow

In Glasgow, the decline of heavy industry (shipbuilding on the Clyde, engineering) from the 1960s left derelict land, unemployment and decaying nineteenth-century inner-city tenements, while traffic and air pollution grew. Management has tackled each problem:

• Housing. Slum clearance of overcrowded tenements; rehousing in new peripheral estates such as Easterhouse and Drumchapel and in new towns such as Cumbernauld; later, renovation of surviving tenements rather than demolition; and regeneration of the Clyde waterfront (the Riverside Museum, SSE Hydro and new housing).
• Transport. The M8 motorway and inner ring road, the modernised Glasgow Subway, pedestrianised shopping streets such as Buchanan Street, bus lanes, and park-and-ride at the urban edge to cut congestion and city-centre car use.
• Environment. Cleaning and reclaiming derelict industrial land, creating parks and open space, and improving air quality through a Low Emission Zone introduced in the 2020s.

A developing-world city

Management often uses self-help schemes, upgrading and site-and-service schemes: the authorities provide a plot with basic water, sewerage and electricity, plus low-cost materials, small loans and legal land tenure, so residents can build and improve their own homes gradually. Upgrading existing settlements is cheaper than clearance and keeps communities and their informal economy together.

Examples in context

Example 1. Glasgow and the Clyde waterfront. Deindustrialisation left the Clyde lined with empty shipyards and contaminated land by the 1980s. Coordinated regeneration since then has converted the waterfront into a mixed-use district: the Riverside Museum, the SSE Hydro arena, the BBC and STV at Pacific Quay, and new flats. Combined with tenement renovation, peripheral estates and the M8 and Subway for transport, this shows a developed-world city managing change across housing, transport and environment. It also shows the trade-offs, as some peripheral estates became deprived and have themselves needed renewal.

Example 2. Dharavi, Mumbai. Dharavi is the SQA's classic developing-world shanty-town case: about a million residents on $2\ km^2$, with a thriving informal economy in recycling, pottery and leather, but chronic overcrowding, shared toilets and unreliable services. Management has combined upgrading (water points, toilets, legal tenure, materials) with the long-running Dharavi Redevelopment Plan to rehouse residents in flats with proper sanitation. The case shows both the appeal of in-situ self-help and the controversy of clearance, which can break up communities and destroy home workspaces.

Try this

Q1. For a developed-world city you have studied, describe how housing problems have been managed. [4 marks]

• Cue. In Glasgow: clearing slum tenements, rehousing in peripheral estates and new towns, renovating older housing, and regenerating derelict land such as the Clyde waterfront.

Q2. Explain why shanty towns develop in developing-world cities. [3 marks]

• Cue. Rapid rural-to-urban migration outpaces the supply of formal housing and services, so newcomers build informal homes from scrap on whatever marginal land they can occupy.