Escaping the doom loop

“Is student housing basically the only thing being built in Glasgow city centre right now?”

When Robbie asked such a direct question of senior leaders in our city, he expected something of a non-answer. Some caveats, or suggestions that there are some other plans in the pipeline.

That isn’t what he got, though. Both council leader Susan Aitken and Nicola Lunn of Savills gave a sober answer: yes, purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) is pretty much the only show town for developers, who’ve largely “moved south” and neglected housing projects in Scotland in favour of more “viable” projects in Manchester and Leeds.

The discussion took place at a packed St George’s Tron on Buchanan Street with over 100 Bell readers turning out. It wasn’t a surprise that tickets sold out within a week. After all, the question — can Glasgow City Centre escape the doom loop? — is one of the biggest there is right now.

It was a candid conversation. On Union Corner, Aitken told the assembled crowd that “five or six years” is a realistic timeframe for a “clear understanding” of what will replace the burned-down building, with little chance of “spades in the ground” by then. “That’s just how long it takes,” she said frankly.

After the panel discussion it was time for a Q&A, where people had a lot to get off their chests about the state of the city. Looking around at the crowd, a penny began to drop for me. People have been longing to thrash this issue out. They just haven’t had the forum to do so.

That's what we want to bring. The tone of the event was what we hope comes across in our reporting: passionate, fair and interested in getting to the facts, not just shouting opinions. It feels like The Bell is creating a space where these conversations can be held, and the decision of senior leaders to participate shows the influence that we’re starting to have on the city’s conversation.

This is exactly why we wanted to launch The Bell. The issues in our city — not least our city centre — are complicated, and need time to look at properly. We felt that Glasgow was sorely in need of something nuanced, deep, and thoughtful that gets into the weeds of what’s really happening. Like our story on the bizarre children’s charity tax avoidance scheme which, besides introducing readers to a surreal talking raccoon, showed the impact office vacancy and expensive business rates have on city coffers. In a strange way, that raccoon is at least partly to blame for some of the city centre's malaise.

So how can we escape the doom loop? It'll take a lot of things, but we believe we have a small part to play. When things go wrong, like the fire at Union Corner, we can properly dig into it — explaining what's happening to you, our readers, and holding leaders accountable for sorting it out. And when things go right, we shine a light on them, showing you a city that isn't the den of crime you might see elsewhere, but has wonderful people doing incredible things in it.