Everyone remembers their first trip on Glasgow’s Subway; bracing yourself for the rush of wind as the train pulls into the station, ducking your head to squeeze inside the car, sinking into the pre-modernisation brown geometric-upholstered seats.
Known affectionately as the Clockwork Orange by generations of Glaswegians, the inner and outer circles have linked the city centre and the west end with the south bank of the Clyde since 1896.
Soon, the world’s third-oldest underground railway could become part of a wider Clyde Metro, which aims to fill in gaps left by buses, trains, and the subway, with options including trams, light rail, or other rapid-transit systems.
The Metro Feasibility Study is part of the wider infrastructure work being undertaken by the £1.13bn Glasgow City Region Deal, signed in 2014 by the UK and Scottish governments and eight local councils. The City Region Deal aims to stimulate a further £3.3bn of private sector investment.
“The Metro is very important,” says Stuart Patrick, chief executive at Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, who sat on the Glasgow Connectivity Commission in 2017. “We’ve been very keen that the first line of the Metro system should connect Paisley Gilmour Street, through to the airport, through the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland (AMIDS), then through Renfrew, Braehead, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), and into the city centre.”
Once the new Metro deposits those future workers and visitors into the city centre, they may well notice a few changes to the grid iron street pattern of old. Work is already underway on the £115m Avenues project, another part of the deal, which aims to create more space for pedestrians and cyclists.
“There are consequences from Avenues - not least of all through their development because it’s disruptive - including the removal of on-street parking in some parts of the city centre,” admits Patrick. “We’ve had a debate around that, and not everyone is happy but, on balance, we’d say that good-quality public realm and greater availability of pavements for use by businesses will come from the Avenues project and so we’re in favour of it.
“Alongside that, we don’t like messaging that says Glasgow city centre is car-free, the Connectivity Commission identified where our strategic car parks should be, and we need to make sure the ‘park-and-stride’ routes for drivers and passengers going to and from those car parks are attractive too.”
The future of the city centre is also on the mind of councillor Angus Millar, who chairs the Covid Recovery Task Force with Patrick. Millar wants to see more people living in the city centre, including in flats above shops, and highlights that plans for the redevelopment of both the Buchanan Galleries and St Enoch shopping centres include residences.
“There’s certainly a future for retail in Glasgow, but it will look different,” he says. “We’re looking to create a sustainable mix of uses in the city centre, so you don’t have monolithic streets of one use type or another.”
Millar expects the canal redevelopment will help to revitalise the north of the city centre, with social housing projects at Cowlairs, Hamiltonhill and Port Dundas. He thinks investment in canal infrastructure will also stimulate private housing developments.
Patrick points to the success of Glasgow’s International Financial Services District (IFSD) as an existing example of the benefits of long-term infrastructure planning. Since it was launched in 2001, more than 15,500 jobs have been created, with existing tenants including Barclays and BNP Paribas expanding their operations, and newcomers such as Esure, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley setting up shop.
Barclays opened its campus at Tradeston in October to house its functions, operations and technology teams. By the end of 2023, it expects to have 5,000 people working in the city, with its headcount having soared by 90% over the past four years.
“We’re now keen to see the next phases of the IFSD,” Patrick adds. “Building the Squiggly Bridge between Broomielaw and Tradeston was considered highly speculative back in 2009 but, lo and behold, it’s delivered, so now it’s time to think about heading westward towards the Kingston Bridge because there’s still space for development.”
Millar points to the potential for other uses along the riverside too and highlights the City Region Deals’ £50m quay walls investment between Glasgow Green and the proposed Govan-Partick bridge, which will help to develop derelict and vacant sites.
“It’s an example of how a relatively banal infrastructure investment could turbocharge the utilisation of the Clyde waterfront and contribute to the success of the innovation quarters,” he adds.
While finance has cemented itself as a key pillar of the city’s economy, two of the stops on that first potential metro route highlight the changing face of Greater Glasgow’s industrial make-up: the AMIDS and the QEUH.
Sitting next to the airport, the AMIDS development includes the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) and the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC) and is linked to industrial stalwarts including Doosan Babcock, Rolls-Royce and Thermo Fisher.
“There are some really exciting projects underway in Glasgow right now and we are seeing the very best of the private and public sectors come together to deliver better patient care,” explains Alison Culpan, Scotland director at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. “The MMIC is going to transform how we think about making new medicines available for the NHS and around the world, with next-generation manufacturing processes helping speed up the time between discovery and treatment.”
Culpan points to examples of collaboration, including AstraZeneca and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde working on research into heart attacks; Bristol Myers Squibb and the University of Glasgow using genetic patient screening to understand rheumatoid arthritis; and Eli Lilly and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde researching diabetes.
As well as combining many hospital services on a single site, QEUH is also playing a role in stimulating Glasgow’s life sciences industry. The University of Glasgow’s Clinical Innovation Zone at the hospital aims to attract businesses to work closely alongside academics and clinicians, while the Precision Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre is based in the neighbouring Teaching & Learning Centre.
Millar, who is also the council’s digital champion, highlights how the Glasgow City Innovation District around the University of Strathclyde and the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District around the University of Glasgow will help to further stimulate entrepreneurship.
“Glasgow doesn’t shout loud enough about the tech assets we have – Edinburgh and Dundee have had better press,” he admits.
Alongside the development of Glasgow’s high-tech industries, Patrick also flies the flag for the city’s traditional prowess in shipping. “Following the Clydebank declaration for green shipping at the COP26 climate change summit, there’s a real role for the city, which has got one of the highest concentrations of ship management companies,” he says.
“And don’t forget the role of the defence industries on the Clyde with shipbuilding – we’ve got the Type-26 frigates being built by BAE Systems at Govan and Scotstoun, plus half a dozen companies involved in shipbuilding or ship repair along the Clyde.”
Out beyond the upper Clyde shipyards, one company in Port Glasgow is giving fellow businesses a helping hand. The Start-up Drinks Lab was created in 2017 by Hannah Fisher and Craig Strachan, who had each run into difficulties in finding bottling plants that could handle small runs of soft drinks while they were launching their own labels.
Their business has expanded by helping companies develop recipes, create branding and produce small batches of spirits, as well as soft drinks. Its latest addition is a canning line, with its headcount rising to 24 and its revenues hitting £1.2m.
“There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on in the drinks industry in Glasgow and the West of Scotland,” says Strachan. “A lot of the conversations we had with people during lockdown are now coming to fruition.”
Start-up Drinks Lab has worked with brands such as Glasgow-based Two Birds Fitness on its canned teas and cold coffees, Titan Spirits in Inverclyde on its rum, and craft soda label Paisley Drinks Co. Fisher and Strachan have also launched more of their own brands, including Just The Tonic mixers and Inverclyde Gin.
While many industries are focused on the opportunities offered by the city region’s infrastructure, one sector has its eyes fixed firmly on connections of a different kind – in space.
Spire is one of the biggest players in Glasgow’s growing space sector and has a network of satellites in orbit, which track aircraft and ships and collect data about the weather. The company arrived in Glasgow in 2015 and has recently moved into larger premises at Skypark, with space to grow its headcount from 110 at present to around 300. Glasgow is the firm’s largest facility and is home to its satellite manufacturing and technology development operations.
“As we started to think about building satellites and put in place the global network of ground stations that we have today to receive the data, we were looking for a base in Europe to work with our existing offices in San Francisco and Singapore that would give us 24-hour coverage around the globe,” explains Dr. Hina Khan, senior project manager at Spire Global and a member of the Space Scotland industry group.
“We wanted somewhere with the right kind of talent, with support from local and national governments and with the capacity to grow – and Glasgow ticked all those boxes.”
With Spire growing its network of satellites in orbit, Khan points to the opportunities for other businesses in Glasgow and further afield to harness the data being produced by the company.
“The data that we collect can have applications across a broad range of fields, including energy and farming,” she explains.
“The next step for Scotland’s space industry will be for more companies to use the data that’s being gathered in space – harnessing data from space has applications that will help us to tackle the climate crisis and reach net zero.”
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