ABSTRACT
From having one of the most developed industrialised economies in the world at the start of this century, Scotland has experienced an almost uninterrupted relative decline. In the period since the mid 1970s, there has been a fundamental transformation of the economy, with the disappearance of many of the traditional industries and a growth in the branch plants of the high-tech and information technology sectors (Danson 1991). While the North Sea Oil and Gas sector has given a fillip to the underlying depression of the northern and eastern regions of Scotland, the industrial heartland has continued to suffer throughout the last two decades. Studies by Cheshire (1990) and Lever (1993) amongst others have catalogued the decline of the Glasgow economy in the context of a ‘Europe of the regions’, with the conurbation placed in the bottom decile of EU functional regions (metropolitan areas) by 1988. Many of the changes that have accompanied these economic processes have impacted heavily on the social and physical environment of the industrial towns of central Scotland. Several regeneration packages to arrest decline were introduced by public development agencies in response to this depressed status. Generally seen as a ‘comparatively early response to perceived problems’ (Cheshire 1990, p.330), these programmes were associated with a ‘remarkable improvement’ in the city’s position, appearing to suggest that Glasgow had been the sixth most successful European city over the period 1971–88 in terms of a set of economic and social indicators of urban problems. Against this apparent success, Keeble, Owens and Thompson (1982) have argued that peripheral European cities, such as Glasgow, will fall further behind the average because of their limited regional accessibility and economic potential, while Mayer (1992) and Perrons (1992) have suggested, respectively, that new institutions are critical in maintaining even this position and that inequalities and regional imbalances are in fact likely to increase over time. Whether the improvement in the relative economic position of the city is sustainable, therefore, is of wider policy significance to metropolitan areas in lagging regions throughout the European Union.
