ABSTRACT
Glasgow is the principal city in the west of Scotland, standing at the centre of a group of smaller industrial towns around the mouth of the river Clyde. It has an elected District Council which is responsible for housing, environmental health, local planning, city parks and other services. Of these, housing is the most important politically and in the scale of the resources it deploys. More than half the city's population live in public housing. Glasgow's main features can be described by comparing them with those of other large British cities. The economic collapse of cities like Glasgow and the devastating clearance schemes, which were the community's main response to the appalling housing in much of their inner cities, both arose from the unplanned and unregulated operation of free enterprise. Glasgow's east end is made up of a number of distinct though interrelated communities.
