ABSTRACT
Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) was the first of the series of major renewal projects launched in the United Kingdom from 1970 onwards. To judge the fairness of criticisms of GEAR's management, two essential points must be recognised. First, the Scottish Development Agency (SDA) was given a co-ordinating role of a kind unfamiliar to all the participants, and which satisfied few of the conventional precepts of effective administration. It was perhaps inevitable that criticism would focus on the Agency's team which had more responsibility than power and, initially, no capacity to demonstrate their presence quickly and convincingly. Second, by comparison with the abrasive experience of the London Docklands Development Corporation in particular, there were fewer conflicts between the Agency and its partners than are reputed to have occurred in subsequent partnership initiatives in England. Some of GEAR'S tensions arose only because the participants had difficulty in grasping the new role they had assigned to the Agency.
