From young people’s accounts, it might appear that the Place Transformation mechanism has ‘worked’ in terms of creating a different identity for the East End and thereby easing the collective burden of reputation and improving individual self-esteem.
Yet, at the same time, many young people talked about their concerns regarding the catalyst for these physical improvements. Their accounts indicated that the physical transformation had been triggered not by local needs but by the prospect of the spotlight falling imminently on the city environs; and of incomers (athletes, tourists, spectators, TV audiences, and inward investors) flooding into the East End during the Games. This viewpoint is supported by an OECD (2010) report which includes the following statement about the potential environmental benefits of hosting a global event: ‘With global attention turning on a city with the arrival of the event, city authorities can justify using funds to carry out much-needed, but perhaps not previously top priority, work on the built environment to give it a facelift’ (p.13). In other words, social returns are more a by-product of hosting, rather than a priority in their own right. The resultant hierarchy, whereby social needs are ranked below those of the media spotlight, was illustrated in an account from a key informant about two East End primary schools, which were ‘in a shocking state’ prior to recent CWG-inspired improvement work in the area. One boy understandably identified this as a moral issue when he asked: ‘Like, they [event organisers and city leaders] obviously had the money to do it [make changes] before, so why didn't they do it before? I know the CWG cost big money, but if they could find the money to do it then, why did they not just do it earlier? (Ben, Wave 2). This rhetorical question suggests that a mega sporting event such as the CWG might be more accurately constructed as a ‘crafted spectacle’ (Harvey, 2005, Hiller, 2006, Murphy and Bauman, 2007). Accordingly, the considerable work undertaken by the event organisers in the period leading up to the CWG might be likened to the production of a theatrical set in readiness for a forthcoming stage performance.
Two main considerations support the characterisation of the CWG as a spectacle. Firstly, there were accusations of superficiality, with efforts to transform place perceived by young
people to be focused largely around the sporting stadia and main arterial routes into the East End, where the footfall of visitors would be most concentrated: ‘It just seems like they only fixed up certain places, and then they left other places which weren't as important. It just didn’t seem fair.(..), and it just so happened that they places were shown on camera or the busiest places’ (Ben, Wave 2). Consequently, young people living in distal neighbourhoods had little or no expectation of place improvement:
‘Like, the wee areas are still the same, but big areas where the new sports things have been built and all that are changed’ (Gill, Wave 1).
‘I think it’s more just outside the city centre near the stadiums and things’
(Chris, Wave 1).
‘Like, all the bits that people actually go are clean next to the Velodrome, next to Dalmarnock Station, all the Athletes’ Village, that's really clean, but
everything else is just kinda messy, cause they [GCC] don't really care’
(Louise, Wave 1).
In some instances, changes amounted to little more than ‘beautification’ measures, evoking the notion of ‘Potemkin villages’ (see Chapter 2), intended to create a fake impression or to hide undesirable conditions from outsiders. A striking example arose in the boys’ focus group when discussion turned to the re-painting of the Bellgrove Hotel19 in the months before the CWG. The following extract shows their appreciation of the irony involved:
‘Plus you look at Bellgrove now, you know..that place..it’s a nice place…like, it’s all done up now. What does that mean? Is that so people can drive by and think that’s nice, but they don’t know what kind of stuff goes on inside it’
(Luke, Wave 1).
In a similar vein, a boy recalled the arrival of ‘props’ during a pre-event surge of activity and their removal immediately afterwards: ‘Just like a kinda false identity, leaving flowers and lovely things about, like these had always been there, and the minute the Games are done, you're driving past seeing a council van lifting flower pots up and putting them in the back of a truck’ (Danny, Wave 2). By the same token, objectionable aspects were perceived by young people to have been deliberately removed from the spotlight. Dionne blamed the council for pushing housing schemes like hers out of the way in order to render them invisible to visitors: ‘Like as if they’ve just shoved all the bad stuff out of the way..(..) because
19 This local landmark received frequent mentions by young people in this study as a place to avoid. A privately-owned hostel for homeless men with alcohol-related problems, the ‘Bellgrove’
had been the subject of a Scottish national tabloid undercover investigation into its slum conditions.
it’s going to be people from all over the world that’s coming’ (Wave 1); while Calum recounted how drug addicts had been temporarily relocated: ‘They took all the drug addicts to caravan sites and all that. Like the City Council took them to caravan sites so the tourists wouldn't see that part of Glasgow. But now they're back, so it's [drug problem] back’ (Wave 2). Although it was not possible to validate whether marginalised groups had indeed been removed, as was the case for Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 (Kennelly and Watt, 2011), it is Calum’s perceptual reading of the situation which is of primary interest here.
Secondly, the data revealed a tension between imposition and empowerment, a risk foreseen in the Glasgow 2014 HIA (Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2008). There was spontaneous discussion in the interviews about people having change done ‘to them’, rather than ‘with them’. A high degree of sensitivity was found surrounding the appropriateness of the change agent, with contradictory views expressed about the extent to which local people felt that the recent changes had been imposed on them. Calum attributed the changes in his neighbourhood to Clyde Gateway. In the following statement, he welcomes the fact that the transformation is being executed by an organisation regarded by him as an ‘insider’ by virtue of the office’s location in the heart of the area: ‘Yeah, Clyde Gateway. There’s actually a little office at Bridgeton Cross. It’s actually stationed there, so it’s’ not as if they’ve come from a different part of Glasgow, and they don’t know anything about the place’ (Wave 1).
Ben echoes Calum’s belief in the importance of local agency but arrives at a different interpretation. According to him, local people had interpreted the changes as an imposition by outsiders. He explains that ‘most people just don’t like change and things. They like the way that they like it and they don’t like to have other people changing it for them. They’d rather if they were going to change it, they’d change it themselves’ (Wave 1). Others were critical of past regeneration efforts. Regarding demolition, some participants expressed views, which were consistent with the concept of ‘place-referent continuity’, theorised by Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996) to explain people’s need to maintain some continuity with the past, especially for places which had particular emotional significance for them. The following quotation indicates that the requirement to have a ‘dialogue between past and present’ (Sennett, 2007) had not been heeded by urban planners:
‘Look at Easterhouse and all. It's all flattened land as well around it. There used to be like flats and everything. My ma stayed there when she was wee and she told us all about it. Like, there's nothing there from the past. I'm not trying to say, just stick with the past and just let it rot, but, like, stick with the past and try and make it safe’ (Luke, Wave 1).
By the same token, new build brought unintended consequences for some participants. One boy’s story conveys his feeling of situational incongruence, akin to a form of ‘virtual’
displacement (Raco, 2004, Smith, 2009), insofar as he perceived that his ‘old’ home no longer sat comfortably within its ‘new’ surroundings:
‘Where I stay, it's like old tenements from the 1800s, and all that, there's a sign on them. And then it's brand new houses that are just built with solar panels on them and all that. My close just looks out of place. It looks as if it shouldn't be there. Everybody's like, are they knocking them down, they look horrible’
(Kieran, Wave 1).
The characterisation of place transformation as spectacle preparation raises two important issues. The first one concerns sustainability, with many aware that, with the CWG stimulus removed, there would no longer be an interest in making the East End a better place:
‘I don't know if it'll have the same investment as it has had. ‘Cause there's not the ...with the CWG, they obviously had to do it, and there was a need to do it.
Now it wouldn't be top of their priority’ (Gerry, Wave 2).
‘I think they put…. a lot more effort came because they knew the
Commonwealth was coming, and because the CWG’s away now, they’ve just went back to normal’ (Avril, Wave 2).
One boy had witnessed the operational winding down post-Games of a key player: ‘There's one Clyde Gateway building at the corner, but they had two buildings, but they've shut themselves down, they've scaled it back’ (Danny Wave 2). Secondly, the question remains whether it is safe to assume that social change necessarily follows physical change. Young people readily distinguished between the physical and social dimensions of place. In the focus groups, participants were asked to score (1-10) in accordance with the extent to which they felt that the CWG had changed the East End. Nearly all gave a composite score to begin with, but then progressed spontaneously onto differential scorings based on their separate assessments of physical and social changes in the area. The following quotation demonstrates this evaluative process:
‘I don't think new buildings is a big massive change, so that's why I've only put a 2. I just think it's a wee change, like, cause I see [the statement that ‘Glasgow 2014 has changed the East End for ever’] as meaning that it's changed the people of the East End and the way we look at things, not just the physical aspect, so that's why I put a 2 (Leona, Wave 2).
Across the sample, there was broad agreement that the physical transformation had not resulted in social renewal:
‘There'd be a difference [if Glasgow had not won the CWG bid] in like the skyline around Glasgow. There wouldn't be a Velodrome, there wouldn't be new sports facilities, but there wouldn't be a difference with us. We'd still be the same people living in the same area doing the same things’ (Danny, Wave 1).
‘It's not going to change the people, it's just going to change the area and how it looks, it's not going to change the people in the community and stuff’ (Ellie, Wave 1).
‘It's [change] a bit superficial, like it's not a real social legacy so much..it's more of an artificial legacy in that you've got the stadium, you've got the Emirates Arena and all that, but you've not really got a social change’ (Said, Wave 2).
‘The people are still the same’ (Ben, Wave 2).
As the timings of these statements suggest, there was no evidence of attitudinal shift between Waves 1 and 2, leading to the conclusion that opinions in this regard were largely unaffected by the CWG sporting event itself.