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Scotland is a breathtakingly
beautiful country.

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No more so than from the air.

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It boasts one of the most photogenic
landscapes in the world.

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With our mountain glens

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and romantic lochs, it is no wonder
it is one of the most photographed.

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Ever since the invention of flight,

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photographers have taken to the air.

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Their photographs are a unique
window into our past.

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And a record of our constantly
changing way of life.

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The aerial view has transformed

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how we understand and plan our
towns and cities.

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From the graceful design of
Edinburgh's New Town

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to building a motorway

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right through the middle of Glasgow.

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I mean, can you imagine them putting
a motorway

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through the heart of Edinburgh?

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Bringing archive photography to
life,

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and recreating places that
exist only as photographs.

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We'll show how planners have used
the view from above

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to play God with our towns and cities.

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Defining how we live our lives, our
homes, where we work,

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and how we get there.

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This is the story of our great
cities from above.

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This is the story of Scotland from
the sky.

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It is a story we start here,

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in one of Glasgow's best loved
green spaces.

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Bellahouston Park.

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And I'm going to try to float
a camera

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up to 300 feet in the air.

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I have got my balloons, I am ready
to reel them out.

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I am not sure this is going to work.

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OK, here goes nothing.

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This is us passing 200 feet now.

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And we're going to keep going.

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80 years ago, visitors to
Bellahouston Park

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could see views of their city
from this great height

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for the very first time.

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Between May and December 1938,

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the park was the home of the
Empire Exhibition.

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It's hard to believe today,

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but 170 acres of this park

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were transformed into a remarkable
display of new architecture.

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And although nobody knew it at the
time,

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there was something here that would
come to define how tens of thousands

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of Scots would live over the next
half century.

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Aerial photographers captured the
park's dramatic transformation.

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The centrepiece of the exhibition
was this tower,

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300 feet high and with three
observation decks

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perched right at the top.

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It was dubbed the Tower of Empire.

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But it was actually Scotland's
first skyscraper.

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Alex Keith went to the top of the
tower as a nine-year-old.

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The tower dominated the whole site.

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You must have been excited to go up it.

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Well, one particular Saturday morning,

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my parents decided that it was about
time that we did go up the tower.

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I can't remember now whether they
gave me the money

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or whether it was a free ride

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in the two express lifts that took
you to the top of the tower.

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That was as exciting as you'd ever
want to be, the speed of these...

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..actual lifts went at.

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And what do you remember from your
view from the top of there?

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A different world. Looking all over
Glasgow,

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you could see the shipyards,

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you could see literally for miles around.

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You could see the hills away
towards Loch Lomond side.

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A vast area.

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It was... You could see for about
a 90-mile radius.

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Have you ever been up a taller
building than that?

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No. No, that was the tallest, and I
think, in all probability,

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I would have had to have gone to

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America, New York, to go up
anything higher.

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So, could you believe that there was
a site like this in Glasgow?

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No, I think we took it for granted.

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Glasgow can do anything, if we put
our minds to it.

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A staggering 12 million people from
around the world came to visit

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the exhibition in the six months it was open.

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They came to enjoy the bandstand,
cafes, pavilions,

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and remarkable custom-made palaces.

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The designer of its tower was

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the visionary modern architect
Thomas Tait.

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For Tait, the future was a life
lived high in the sky,

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and his building was a symbol of
a new Scotland,

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raised up to look down on the old
one from above.

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But this Scotland would take another
few decades to arrive.

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When the exhibition closed, most of
the buildings were soon taken down.

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Tait's tower had been built to last,

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designed as the first new icon of a
modern Glasgow skyline.

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But it survived just one year.

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It too was demolished,

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out of fear that its height would
attract

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German bombers in World War II.

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Nowadays the tower is nothing but a memory.

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Even its foundations are overgrown
by the trees on top of Ibrox Hill.

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The city of the future was gone, but
not forgotten, and not for good.

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The record of how our towns and
cities have changed

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over the past century
is kept here,

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in the archives of Historic
Environment Scotland, in Edinburgh.

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It's home to Scotland's national
collection of aerial photography,

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the biggest resource of its kind in Europe.

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They are literally millions of
photographs in the collection.

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And for over a decade, I've worked
in this vast archive,

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delving into its hidden corners,

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exploring its history, and its
secrets.

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Each photograph, like this beautiful
shot of Aberdeen from 1989,

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is a window into our past,
showing us how we lived.

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But these pictures are more than
just mute images.

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The information they contain has transformed

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how we see and change our urban landscapes.

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Our workhorse is this trusty little Cessna.

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We fly all over Scotland in it,

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carefully documenting the world below.

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Every year, we head to the air to take

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thousands of new photographs to
add to our collection.

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But before the invention of flight,

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there were huge gaps in our
understanding of the country.

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300 years ago,

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the country's mountainous terrain

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was unknown territory to many Scots.

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And to those who ruled them.

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For outsiders, the Highlands were

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a mysterious and intimidating landscape.

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After successive Jacobite rebellions,

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the Government realised they needed
a more complete picture

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of the lay of the land.

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So they hatched an ambitious plan,

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to accurately map the Highlands of
Scotland for the very first time.

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To complete this Herculean task,

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the Government turned to a maverick
map-maker from Carluke.

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He was just 21 years old, and his
name was William Roy.

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He began his survey here, at the tip
of Loch Ness in the summer of 1747.

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Roy set off with a surveyor's wheel,

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marked the first and second bends
with two poles,

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and then measured the distance
between them with metal chains.

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And on and on he went.

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Over and over again.

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He repeated this for every new bend
in the road.

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You've got to wonder how many
bends he measured.

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Rather him than me.

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Roy charted not just distances, but
also the features of the landscape.

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Over the next five years,

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Roy and his team mapped a remarkable

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15,000 square miles of the Highlands.

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Every single road, river, loch, mountain,

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glen and village was translated into

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a spectacular patchwork of northern
Scotland.

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They're beautiful ink and
watercolour maps.

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They really are a phenomenal achievement

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given the basic equipment Roy used,

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the hostile terrain and the limited
manpower available to him.

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And you can see just how accurate
his maps are

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when you match them with the real
view from above.

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It revealed an incredibly detailed
view of the landscape,

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as if seen from the sky.

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Once you understand a country's
landscape, then you can change it.

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Armed with the knowledge Roy's maps
gave them,

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the Government could now make plans
for how to, in their words,

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improve the Highlands.

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Roads, bridges, jobs and industry -

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all were on the drawing board.

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But how was all of this going to be achieved

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in such an unforgiving landscape?

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Step forward, some of Scotland's
world-famous engineers,

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like Thomas Telford.

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He thought if you could open up travel

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and trade in this tough terrain,

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you could forge new communities,

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you could engineer a future for the Highlands.

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One man who has made it his life's
work to study the history of the

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Highlands is Jim Hunter.

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The notion of actually creating things,

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settlements, towns, from scratch,
that was entirely new.

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And, of course, the main difficulty
was to engineer

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enough economic activity to make
these places viable and worthwhile.

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And how big a role did Thomas
Telford play

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in the transformation of this landscape?

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Thomas Telford was key to this.

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He played an enormous role in the
development of the Highlands

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in the years around and just after
1800.

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He didn't always hang around to
oversee the details, as it were,

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but in the beginning it was Telford that was

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designing these communities,

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designing the facilities that went
along with them.

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So he was absolutely critical to

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what was happening in the Highlands
at that time.

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Telford's mission was to tame the
wild landscape.

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To make it accessible.

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And so he built new roads and bridges.

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Like this beautiful crossing here in Dunkeld.

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This new bridge could carry an army

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if the Highlands rose up again in rebellion.

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But it could also carry cattle and grain,

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and help bring money into the economy.

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In the late 1780s,

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Telford was asked by the British
Fisheries Board

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to help design and build, from scratch,

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new fishing towns and villages in
the Highlands.

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Ullapool is nestled on the edge of
Loch Broom.

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And it is hard to think of a more
picturesque spot to build on.

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When you look down from above,

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you can see it's a cleverly
arranged pattern

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of neat little streets.

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Work was completed in 1798,
and even to this day,

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little has changed with the layout.

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This street, Shore Street,

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runs parallel to the waters of
Loch Broom.

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And originally it was reserved for
public buildings

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and storehouses for the fish.

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The workers' streets were placed
behind, going east to west,

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and its beauty was its compact simplicity.

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These planned ports were built to
bring prosperity

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to the people of the Highlands for
generations to come.

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Ullapool's neat and ordered streets

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became the model for later fishing
towns, like Pultneytown, in Wick.

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But in Ullapool's case, despite
these best laid plans,

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as a fishing port it was a crushing failure.

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Within a few years, local herring
stocks had vanished,

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and the town's economy collapsed for
the best part of a century.

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The herring may have fled,
but Ullapool survived.

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Today it's a tourist hot spot and
gateway to the Outer Hebrides.

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It's testament to the vision of the
original planners

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that over 200 years later,

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Ullapool's practical design has endured.

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30 years before Ullapool's construction,

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a new urban order on a much grander scale

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was emerging in Edinburgh:

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the New Town.

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At the time, it was the largest

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planned city development in the world...

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..spreading out over the empty
fields to the north of the castle.

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For many of its residents today,

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there's nowhere better to live.

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Walking around here, it is easy
to see why.

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It is a masterpiece of thoughtful
planning, a monument to order,

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rationality, elegance,

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full of grand townhouses and
sweeping crescents.

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For me, the New Town has always
been a kind of architectural poem,

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written in stone.

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It's even more beautiful
when viewed from above.

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In the days before planes and drones,

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there was one eccentric Edinburgh
resident who was fascinated by high

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viewpoints over the city.

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His name was Patrick Geddis,

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and he would often be seen leading groups

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up to the tall tower at the top of
the Royal Mile.

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"Perhaps you are wondering why

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"I hurried you up here from the street",

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he would ask the group.

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00:16:50,400 --> 00:16:53,400
"Simply because the exertion of
climbing gets the

250
00:16:53,400 --> 00:16:56,400
"blood pumping, clears the fog from
your brain,

251
00:16:56,400 --> 00:17:01,000
"and prepares you for the mental
thrill of these outlooks."

252
00:17:04,500 --> 00:17:09,000
The tower was one of the highest
spots in the whole of Edinburgh.

253
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:14,500
And right at the very top was
a camera obscura.

254
00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:21,400
It's like a giant camera laid on
its back,

255
00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:23,800
with a mirror this size on top of
the building,

256
00:17:23,800 --> 00:17:26,700
directing light down onto this
wooden table.

257
00:17:26,700 --> 00:17:30,700
It allowed the viewer to look down
on the city and the landscape from

258
00:17:30,700 --> 00:17:34,500
above, charting the relationship
between the two.

259
00:17:34,500 --> 00:17:37,100
It offered views in every direction,

260
00:17:37,100 --> 00:17:40,500
but it also showed you more than
just scenery.

261
00:17:42,400 --> 00:17:46,500
Geddis liked the view so much that
he bought the tower

262
00:17:46,500 --> 00:17:49,200
and its camera obscura.

263
00:17:50,200 --> 00:17:54,200
He was entranced by the high vantage
it offered.

264
00:17:54,200 --> 00:17:56,600
Because it allowed him to understand
the city

265
00:17:56,600 --> 00:17:59,100
in a completely different way.

266
00:18:04,200 --> 00:18:06,100
And from his beloved Outlook Tower,

267
00:18:06,100 --> 00:18:08,200
he could see the old town and
the new town

268
00:18:08,200 --> 00:18:11,800
set opposite each other like
two pages of an open book,

269
00:18:11,800 --> 00:18:15,000
telling a remarkable story of urban history.

270
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:16,900
He could see the past but also,

271
00:18:16,900 --> 00:18:20,300
crucially, he could imagine the future.

272
00:18:25,800 --> 00:18:28,000
The Edinburgh of Patrick Geddis's era

273
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,400
was very much a city of the mind,

274
00:18:30,400 --> 00:18:33,400
graceful and refined.

275
00:18:36,500 --> 00:18:42,000
And a world away from her brash and
unruly neighbour, Glasgow.

276
00:18:42,500 --> 00:18:45,700
Here it was all about the muscle.

277
00:18:46,500 --> 00:18:51,800
A rapid industrial growth, which
began in the late 18th-century.

278
00:18:56,400 --> 00:19:01,200
By the mid-1800s, it was
Scotland's biggest city.

279
00:19:04,700 --> 00:19:09,000
The old centre was the medieval cathedral.

280
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:14,300
But as the Industrial Revolution
powered onwards,

281
00:19:14,300 --> 00:19:18,700
it was left isolated on the city's fringes.

282
00:19:18,700 --> 00:19:24,700
And factories and tenements spread
like a rash, moving westwards.

283
00:19:26,500 --> 00:19:30,700
In 1853, the writer Hugh MacDonald
memorably wrote,

284
00:19:30,700 --> 00:19:35,200
"The great city dims the autumn sky
with its canopy of smoke."

285
00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:39,200
By this time, Glasgow was on its way
to becoming one of the greatest

286
00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:44,000
manufacturing machines the world had
ever seen, a city of iron and steam,

287
00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:46,000
fire and steel.

288
00:19:49,800 --> 00:19:53,300
Workers flocked to the city in their
hundreds and thousands from the

289
00:19:53,300 --> 00:19:57,500
Highlands and Lowlands and across
the sea from Ireland.

290
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:01,400
They were packed into slum tenements.

291
00:20:02,500 --> 00:20:08,000
Overcrowded and dirty, disease and
suffering were rife.

292
00:20:10,200 --> 00:20:12,800
Living conditions may have been tough,

293
00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:17,500
but there was a welcome escape at
the weekends - the football.

294
00:20:19,100 --> 00:20:21,200
Over the course of the 20th century,

295
00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:24,300
the football stadium gained a unique status.

296
00:20:24,300 --> 00:20:29,000
Nowhere else could compare to it as
a place for mass gathering.

297
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:34,000
Not churches, not markets, not civic
squares, not cinemas, not parks.

298
00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:37,800
And nowhere is more hallowed than
this place,

299
00:20:37,800 --> 00:20:41,300
our national stadium,
Hampden Park.

300
00:20:44,700 --> 00:20:47,000
When it was finished in 1903,

301
00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:50,900
it was the biggest football stadium
in the world.

302
00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:56,800
You can see from this photograph
taken in 1927 that Hampden Park was

303
00:20:56,800 --> 00:21:02,100
largely surrounded by green fields
and a scattering of houses.

304
00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:07,100
The empty fields have long since
been swallowed up

305
00:21:07,100 --> 00:21:10,100
by the advancing city of Glasgow.

306
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:12,300
In little over a century,

307
00:21:12,300 --> 00:21:15,500
both the stadium itself and the
surrounding area

308
00:21:15,500 --> 00:21:18,600
have changed beyond all recognition.

309
00:21:19,700 --> 00:21:21,900
At the time of Hampden's construction,

310
00:21:21,900 --> 00:21:24,900
Glasgow was still a city of chaotic growth,

311
00:21:24,900 --> 00:21:28,000
where planning was an afterthought.

312
00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:33,700
But by the 1920s and '30s,

313
00:21:33,700 --> 00:21:39,600
fresh ideas about how to redesign
our cities began to emerge.

314
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:44,600
And this time the planners had
a new tool - flight.

315
00:21:57,700 --> 00:22:02,800
Sitting up in the front of a
helicopter is awe-inspiring.

316
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:08,900
Up here, you can look out and spot features

317
00:22:08,900 --> 00:22:11,700
you just can't see from the ground.

318
00:22:21,500 --> 00:22:24,600
To the pioneers of flight and aerial photography,

319
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:27,600
these views were a revelation.

320
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:37,700
Paris was the first-ever city to be
flown over by an aircraft.

321
00:22:37,700 --> 00:22:41,200
As a student, the French architect
Le Corbusier

322
00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:43,000
watched the pilot circling

323
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:47,400
the Eiffel Tower and became
fascinated with flying.

324
00:22:49,900 --> 00:22:51,900
Like Patrick Geddis before him,

325
00:22:51,900 --> 00:22:56,700
he understood the most valuable view
of a city was from the air.

326
00:22:57,300 --> 00:23:01,600
But not everything that Le Corbusier
saw impressed him.

327
00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:03,600
After one flight, he wrote,

328
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:06,300
"Fly over our 19th-century cities

329
00:23:06,300 --> 00:23:09,000
"with row after row of houses
without hearts,

330
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:11,900
"furrowed with their canyons
of soulless streets.

331
00:23:11,900 --> 00:23:14,300
"Look down and judge for yourself.

332
00:23:14,300 --> 00:23:18,300
"The architects of the past didn't
build for men,

333
00:23:18,300 --> 00:23:20,900
"they built for money."

334
00:23:25,900 --> 00:23:29,400
Le Corbusier thought he saw
a terrible truth,

335
00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:33,500
that cities were killing the people
who lived in them.

336
00:23:35,500 --> 00:23:39,400
"Cities with their misery must be
torn down", he said.

337
00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:43,600
"They must be largely destroyed, and
fresh cities built."

338
00:23:52,500 --> 00:23:56,400
This God's-eye view transformed
Le Corbusier's thoughts

339
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:58,500
on how to rebuild.

340
00:24:03,300 --> 00:24:08,100
And, like Thomas Tait, he favoured
building high.

341
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,800
For Le Corbusier's Scottish disciples,

342
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:21,000
the cities of the Central Belt were
prime candidates for his new vision.

343
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:25,800
But as Europe went to war in 1939,

344
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:29,600
the architect's plans would have to wait.

345
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:38,800
The millions of tonnes of bombs
dropped during World War II

346
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,300
caused untold damage.

347
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:44,900
While Scotland avoided the brunt
of the destruction,

348
00:24:44,900 --> 00:24:47,700
the hardships the ordinary people suffered

349
00:24:47,700 --> 00:24:51,900
led to a strong desire to
improve living conditions.

350
00:24:56,300 --> 00:25:00,500
It was time to look at the country afresh...

351
00:25:00,500 --> 00:25:03,700
..to examine every inch of land.

352
00:25:07,500 --> 00:25:11,700
When the RAF pilots returned
home from the war,

353
00:25:11,700 --> 00:25:15,900
they were given a new mission...

354
00:25:15,900 --> 00:25:20,800
..to make a photographic map
of the whole of Scotland.

355
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:26,000
The same planes, pilots and photographers

356
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:29,100
who had helped plan and carry out
the bombing of mainland Europe

357
00:25:29,100 --> 00:25:32,500
were now instrumental in rebuilding
on the home front.

358
00:25:32,500 --> 00:25:35,300
It was an incredibly important job.

359
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:43,000
But it was also mind-numbingly dull.

360
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:48,200
As one pilot wrote, "On each trip we
would be allocated a block of land,

361
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,800
"40 miles long by 30 miles wide.

362
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:57,000
"This was divided into ten runs,
each three miles apart."

363
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:02,700
"400 miles of staring at the ground
through a bomb sight."

364
00:26:03,700 --> 00:26:06,000
"Tedious in the extreme."

365
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,600
They carried on like this for six years.

366
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:14,700
In 500 flights, they took nearly
300,000 photographs.

367
00:26:14,700 --> 00:26:19,500
Their work effectively took
planners into the sky.

368
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:24,600
Two centuries after William Roy,

369
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:28,400
Scotland could once again
be viewed from above.

370
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:37,300
Mosaic maps were stitched together,
each one metre square,

371
00:26:37,300 --> 00:26:41,700
corresponding to 25 square
kilometres of land.

372
00:26:42,500 --> 00:26:46,000
Putting these mosaic maps together
was painstaking work.

373
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:49,400
It's like the world's hardest
jigsaw.

374
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:52,500
But what could be laid on top
was the blueprint

375
00:26:52,500 --> 00:26:54,400
for a post-war nation -

376
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:56,900
new roads here, new forests there,

377
00:26:56,900 --> 00:26:59,600
could this be the spot for a new dam?

378
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:05,100
And could we simply redesign the
whole layout of our biggest city?

379
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:13,500
This 1945 public information film

380
00:27:13,500 --> 00:27:18,900
shows Glasgow's Victorian layout was
no longer fit for purpose.

381
00:27:19,500 --> 00:27:21,400
1,000 feet in the air,

382
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:25,300
looking down on a city of congested
buildings and narrow roads,

383
00:27:25,300 --> 00:27:30,200
rent with railway viaducts and ships
which load and unload at the very

384
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,200
heart of the city's gates.

385
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:34,800
Down there, a great population,

386
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:37,300
living under outmoded conditions

387
00:27:37,300 --> 00:27:42,100
which give rise to much confusion,
as well as discomfort.

388
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:50,600
Nowhere else in Europe was as
densely populated as this.

389
00:27:56,100 --> 00:27:58,700
Something clearly had to be done.

390
00:27:58,700 --> 00:28:03,000
Planners needed to think fast,
and they needed to think big.

391
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:07,400
In the end, two vastly different
visions for the city's future,

392
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:12,000
both inspired by the God's-eye view,
battled it out.

393
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:15,000
The most radical was contained
in this document,

394
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:21,700
written in 1945 by Glasgow's master
of works, Robert Bruce.

395
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:27,200
A devoted follower of Le Corbusier,

396
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:33,200
he believed the best way forward was
simply to wipe the slate clean.

397
00:28:34,100 --> 00:28:37,500
What he proposed in his
infamous 1945 report

398
00:28:37,500 --> 00:28:42,000
was the levelling of the old
centre of Glasgow in its entirety.

399
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:45,700
Nothing would be saved from his
savage planning scalpel.

400
00:28:45,700 --> 00:28:49,500
Iconic buildings, like Central
Station, the School of Art,

401
00:28:49,500 --> 00:28:51,900
even the City Chambers behind me,

402
00:28:51,900 --> 00:28:54,500
they would all be demolished.

403
00:29:03,300 --> 00:29:07,000
A new Glasgow would arise
in its place.

404
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:12,000
And it would be dominated by
skyscrapers.

405
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,200
The plan for Glasgow of tomorrow
is taking shape.

406
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:21,800
The overcrowded and
overdeveloped city

407
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:25,400
will give place to a new
and free-flowing city.

408
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:29,000
An intriguing model of Bruce's plan

409
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:31,500
was put on display at
the Kelvin Hall,

410
00:29:31,500 --> 00:29:35,400
to show the public what this new
Glasgow would look like.

411
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:42,600
It bore little resemblance to the
city Glaswegians called home.

412
00:29:45,100 --> 00:29:49,100
Bruce's plan was met with fierce resistance.

413
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,700
His main opponent was a dapper Englishman,

414
00:29:53,700 --> 00:29:57,400
famous for his post-war rebuilding
plans for London -

415
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:00,000
Patrick Abercrombie.

416
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,400
Rather than build upwards in
confined spaces,

417
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,400
Abercrombie advocated low-rise living

418
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:10,100
in a series of brand-new towns,
built on open land,

419
00:30:10,100 --> 00:30:12,900
far beyond the city limits.

420
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:18,300
Glasgow's leaders now had two very
different visions

421
00:30:18,300 --> 00:30:20,900
of the city's future
in front of them.

422
00:30:20,900 --> 00:30:24,700
Incredibly, they seemed to agree
with Bruce.

423
00:30:24,700 --> 00:30:28,700
His controversial vision was
approved in 1947.

424
00:30:28,700 --> 00:30:34,700
At the same time, plans were being
made for skyscrapers across Glasgow.

425
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:40,900
Huge swathes of the old tenement
blocks were demolished,

426
00:30:40,900 --> 00:30:45,200
knocked down to make way for
high-rise flats.

427
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:53,300
One of the earliest high-rise
buildings

428
00:30:53,300 --> 00:30:55,700
can still be found here in Cardonald,

429
00:30:55,700 --> 00:30:58,400
in the south-west of Glasgow.

430
00:31:01,100 --> 00:31:05,600
Work began on Moss Heights in 1950,

431
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:08,800
and took four years to complete.

432
00:31:13,100 --> 00:31:14,700
For potential new residents,

433
00:31:14,700 --> 00:31:18,100
these flats couldn't be more
different from the old tenements.

434
00:31:18,100 --> 00:31:22,600
They were ten storeys high,
offering stunning views over the
whole city.

435
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:25,600
And inside was a transformation,

436
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:27,600
kitchens with all mod cons,

437
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:30,600
living rooms kept toasty by a revolutionary

438
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:32,700
coal-powered central heating system,

439
00:31:32,700 --> 00:31:35,200
which was included in the rent.

440
00:31:36,100 --> 00:31:40,800
They were marketed as the perfect
place to bring up young families.

441
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,800
In this house, with all its modern amenities,

442
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,400
the mother can care for her bairns

443
00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:47,700
as she's always wanted to.

444
00:31:47,700 --> 00:31:50,700
She's no longer haunted by the fear
they may have wandered away to some

445
00:31:50,700 --> 00:31:52,400
traffic-filled street,

446
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:54,600
or that they're breathing germs of disease

447
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:57,400
in a refuse-littered back court.

448
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:03,000
Almost 70 years after they were built,

449
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,800
young families still love living here.

450
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:11,400
Alison, you've lived in tower
blocks for most of your life,

451
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:13,700
haven't you? Yeah, I have, since I
was about seven.

452
00:32:13,700 --> 00:32:17,600
I lived in tower blocks in Ibrox
on a side 17 high -

453
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:19,300
and I'm petrified of heights,

454
00:32:19,300 --> 00:32:20,600
absolutely petrified.

455
00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:25,600
So you could just imagine looking
out the windae - never happened.

456
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,200
But here you only have two on a landing.

457
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:31,700
The one that I stayed in before -
you had five houses on the landing,

458
00:32:31,700 --> 00:32:33,400
so it was quite in-your-face, if you
know what I mean?

459
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:35,700
Now you're bringing up a child as well.

460
00:32:35,700 --> 00:32:37,700
How does she enjoy living here?

461
00:32:37,700 --> 00:32:40,500
She loves it here because of the space.

462
00:32:40,500 --> 00:32:43,900
They have a garden club and things
like that, homework club.

463
00:32:43,900 --> 00:32:47,100
She loves going to that. She's met
quite a few new friends there.

464
00:32:47,100 --> 00:32:52,000
So she enjoys... You get a load of
different people turning up and it's

465
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:54,400
just getting to know your
neighbours,

466
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,400
which is something you didn't really
do before

467
00:32:56,400 --> 00:33:00,000
in the flats I lived in before. So
you have a real community feel here?

468
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:03,000
Yeah. There's a lot of different
nationalities here

469
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:04,800
so we're trying to bring them together

470
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,300
because other places it'd be,
"You're there, we're here."

471
00:33:08,300 --> 00:33:13,000
But here it's we're trying to bring
them all in and get to know

472
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:14,400
your community, in a sense.

473
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:18,300
If you had to sum up what it's like
to live in these blocks,

474
00:33:18,300 --> 00:33:21,600
how would you put that? I've always
liked living here.

475
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,700
I've been here, what, 13 and a half
year now?

476
00:33:24,700 --> 00:33:27,800
And I don't see myself leaving it
any time soon.

477
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,100
The view from the top of Moss Heights

478
00:33:32,100 --> 00:33:35,200
is one that Thomas Tait would
approve of.

479
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:39,700
You can see far out across the city
in every direction.

480
00:33:40,100 --> 00:33:45,100
Being set right in the heart of
Cardonald is also an advantage.

481
00:33:45,100 --> 00:33:50,500
There are shops nearby and plenty
of buses into the city centre.

482
00:33:52,300 --> 00:33:55,100
After a multi-million pound makeover,

483
00:33:55,100 --> 00:33:58,300
these three blocks are stalwart survivors,

484
00:33:58,300 --> 00:34:01,600
still standing proud over the city.

485
00:34:02,100 --> 00:34:04,200
Moss Heights is a useful reminder

486
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,500
that not all Glasgow high-rises were,

487
00:34:06,500 --> 00:34:10,100
in Billy Connolly's memorable
phrase, deserts with windows.

488
00:34:10,100 --> 00:34:14,500
Some of them have proved to be great
places to live, built to last,

489
00:34:14,500 --> 00:34:17,400
and clearly loved by the residents.

490
00:34:20,300 --> 00:34:23,500
In the years after Moss Heights' completion,

491
00:34:23,500 --> 00:34:27,500
many more high-rises sprung up all
over the country.

492
00:34:27,500 --> 00:34:31,300
These huge concrete slabs fitted in perfectly

493
00:34:31,300 --> 00:34:34,800
with Robert Bruce's vision
of the modern city.

494
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:39,100
Streets in the sky, not streets on
the ground.

495
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,900
But Bruce had already resigned in disgust

496
00:34:43,900 --> 00:34:47,500
before any of the new tower
blocks were finished.

497
00:34:49,900 --> 00:34:51,700
In 1949,

498
00:34:51,700 --> 00:34:54,500
his proposal to demolish the city centre

499
00:34:54,500 --> 00:34:57,500
was dismissed by the Glasgow Corporation

500
00:34:57,500 --> 00:35:00,600
because of its exorbitant cost.

501
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:07,000
Instead, they ruled in favour of the
Patrick Abercrombie's new town plan.

502
00:35:15,300 --> 00:35:17,700
Hi, Ronnie.
Morning, Jamie. How are you?

503
00:35:17,700 --> 00:35:20,500
Fine. What's the weather looking
like today?

504
00:35:20,500 --> 00:35:22,800
It's looking quite good. The wind's
right down the runway,

505
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:26,200
visibility's 10km and the
cloud base is quite high.

506
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:27,800
So today should go quite well.

507
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:29,400
Let's get going.

508
00:35:35,100 --> 00:35:38,600
I'm going up in the National
Collection of Aerial Photography's

509
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:43,700
survey plane to have a look for
myself at some of these new towns.

510
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,000
It's quite cramped inside.

511
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,000
It's like I'm in a mini with wings.

512
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,100
But the discomfort is worth it.

513
00:36:00,100 --> 00:36:03,700
As ever, the views are fantastic.

514
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:11,400
Most of Scotland's new towns were
built on greenfield sites.

515
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:19,600
Take this photograph from the summer of 1947.

516
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:21,900
There are rolling fields and hedgerows,

517
00:36:21,900 --> 00:36:24,000
in the distance a small village,

518
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:28,500
and at its centre a bright rectangle
of corn being worked over by one

519
00:36:28,500 --> 00:36:30,000
farmer and his horse.

520
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,900
It's an idyllic country scene...

521
00:36:37,100 --> 00:36:41,400
Gone forever, buried a few years later

522
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:46,200
beneath Scotland's first new town,
East Kilbride.

523
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:58,100
Four more new towns were developed
in the 1940s and '50s.

524
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:05,000
The idea behind them was simple,

525
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:09,400
to provide new homes for
up to 350,000 people

526
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,600
in places outside Scotland's
biggest cities.

527
00:37:23,300 --> 00:37:28,100
The second of these new towns was
Glenrothes in Fife.

528
00:37:37,900 --> 00:37:42,800
The town was custom-designed with
curved clusters of low rise housing,

529
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,300
grouped together in separate precincts.

530
00:37:45,300 --> 00:37:46,900
It couldn't have been more different

531
00:37:46,900 --> 00:37:48,600
from the overcrowded tenements that

532
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,000
people had left behind.

533
00:37:52,500 --> 00:37:57,600
And you can see just how much green
space Glenrothes enjoys.

534
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:00,600
For the new town planners,

535
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:04,500
recreational spaces were essential
to quality of life.

536
00:38:04,500 --> 00:38:09,100
From up here you can see how trees
and parks flow between the roads and

537
00:38:09,100 --> 00:38:12,400
housing, like rivers of greenery.

538
00:38:17,300 --> 00:38:21,100
Everyone seems to have a decent
sized garden, too.

539
00:38:21,100 --> 00:38:25,400
It's no wonder the town has won
so many Britain in Bloom awards.

540
00:38:27,100 --> 00:38:29,000
The different areas of Glenrothes

541
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:33,100
were named after the farms the town
was built over.

542
00:38:33,100 --> 00:38:36,100
Some of them don't sound very
Scottish.

543
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:42,800
Each district was to be its own
self-sustaining community,

544
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:49,000
with shops, churches, schools and
even public art.

545
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,500
Many of the town's early residents
were brought here

546
00:38:55,500 --> 00:38:59,100
to work in the newly-built
Rothes Colliery.

547
00:39:01,900 --> 00:39:04,900
The 1951 plan of action for the town

548
00:39:04,900 --> 00:39:09,200
forecast a population of around
30,000.

549
00:39:09,700 --> 00:39:12,700
But building progress was slow.

550
00:39:13,300 --> 00:39:16,300
These maps, each five years apart,

551
00:39:16,300 --> 00:39:20,600
show how the town grew gradually in
size over the decades.

552
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:24,900
Everything here was built from
scratch - schools, play areas,

553
00:39:24,900 --> 00:39:27,400
a new shopping centre,
administrative buildings,

554
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:30,300
all set within acres of green space.

555
00:39:30,300 --> 00:39:35,500
Le Corbusier's vision of separating
residential and industrial areas was

556
00:39:35,500 --> 00:39:37,900
carried out to the letter.

557
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:44,500
The coal mines shut down after only
a few years due to flooding,

558
00:39:44,500 --> 00:39:46,700
but the town continued to grow

559
00:39:46,700 --> 00:39:51,900
and became a key location for the
Scottish electronics industry.

560
00:39:53,700 --> 00:39:57,000
It's now home to 50,000 people.

561
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:02,500
And Linda Bagnall has lived here for
most of her life.

562
00:40:03,900 --> 00:40:06,900
What did you think when you first
arrived here as a 12-year-old girl?

563
00:40:06,900 --> 00:40:09,600
Did it feel like you were living in
the future at the time?

564
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:11,400
Oh, I was too young to think about that.

565
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:12,800
I was just wondering where

566
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:18,000
the dancing was going to be that weekend!

567
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:20,400
Yeah. When you build a community
from scratch,

568
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:23,500
how do you generate a spirit around it?

569
00:40:23,500 --> 00:40:26,500
I believe the people that were
moving into the town,

570
00:40:26,500 --> 00:40:28,900
they were moving into Glenrothes for
a reason.

571
00:40:28,900 --> 00:40:31,300
They were all looking for a new start.

572
00:40:31,300 --> 00:40:36,900
So there was no negativity and that
wore off onto everything.

573
00:40:36,900 --> 00:40:39,600
A lot of new towns are often held up

574
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:41,800
as some of the worst places in the
UK to live -

575
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:43,800
do you understand that?

576
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:45,800
Having been in some of them, yes.

577
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:47,600
Having been in this one, no.

578
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:49,500
It never applied to Glenrothes.

579
00:40:49,500 --> 00:40:51,900
What do you think sets Glenrothes apart?

580
00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:55,700
I think these early town planners

581
00:40:55,700 --> 00:40:58,500
and architects were innovative thinkers.

582
00:40:58,500 --> 00:41:02,200
For instance, the housing in
Glenrothes is superb.

583
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:04,800
Where there was good views over the town,

584
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,000
they put the lounges upstairs and

585
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:10,600
the kitchen and bedroom areas downstairs,

586
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:12,300
so they chopped and changed.

587
00:41:12,300 --> 00:41:14,400
They looked at the big picture.

588
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,500
How do you feel about the green
spaces in Glenrothes?

589
00:41:16,500 --> 00:41:19,300
I think the green spaces are very important.

590
00:41:19,300 --> 00:41:24,000
Everywhere you go, to Riverside
Park, to Warout Park,

591
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:30,500
to the walkways, to Boblingen Way,
to housing schemes,

592
00:41:30,500 --> 00:41:32,000
it's rich in colour.

593
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,800
And lots of roundabouts that are
also rich in colour!

594
00:41:43,500 --> 00:41:45,300
Driving round Glenrothes,

595
00:41:45,300 --> 00:41:47,500
what strikes you very quickly is

596
00:41:47,500 --> 00:41:51,100
just how well served the town
is by roads.

597
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:58,100
Transport links were one of the

598
00:41:58,100 --> 00:42:02,100
founding principles of the
new town idea.

599
00:42:03,700 --> 00:42:07,300
It was a vision of the future that
saw the motor car as a symbol of

600
00:42:07,300 --> 00:42:09,800
movement, of freedom.

601
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:13,000
It's easy to see the impact of this
on Glenrothes today.

602
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:15,300
Apparently, there are more
roundabouts here

603
00:42:15,300 --> 00:42:18,300
than in the rest of Fife put together.

604
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:28,600
By the 1950s and '60s, cars had
become kings of the roads,

605
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:31,700
and a new transport infrastructure
sprang up

606
00:42:31,700 --> 00:42:35,500
throughout our towns and cities to
serve them.

607
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:42,600
This route cuts right across the
heart of the central belt.

608
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:54,000
It's our busiest road,
the M8 motorway.

609
00:42:55,100 --> 00:43:00,100
60 miles long, it connects Edinburgh
in the east, to Glasgow,

610
00:43:00,100 --> 00:43:03,100
and finally Greenock, in the west.

611
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:10,100
One of the reasons for building the
M8 was to ease the terrible traffic

612
00:43:10,100 --> 00:43:13,300
congestion in central Glasgow.

613
00:43:13,300 --> 00:43:16,200
ARCHIVE: Glasgow's roads were not
designed for motorised traffic,

614
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:18,900
they were built for horse-drawn vehicles.

615
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:24,200
It is not surprising that congestion
of traffic of all kinds,

616
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:27,100
such as this, could be a daily
occurrence,

617
00:43:27,100 --> 00:43:31,400
causing danger and wasting much time
and energy.

618
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:36,900
By 1956, the average journey speed
in the city

619
00:43:36,900 --> 00:43:40,700
registered little more than
a brisk walk.

620
00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:45,000
The bold solution proposed by

621
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:49,200
Glasgow's all-powerful planners in
the early 1960s

622
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,700
was an inner ring road.

623
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:56,300
Unlike most ring roads, it didn't
bypass the city centre,

624
00:43:56,300 --> 00:43:58,600
it cut right through the middle of it.

625
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:02,600
It was to be Britain's first urban motorway.

626
00:44:05,300 --> 00:44:11,500
Every day, up to 180,000 vehicles
tear along its tarmac.

627
00:44:13,300 --> 00:44:16,400
I'm going to speak to one of its
regular users

628
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:19,200
to find out what he thinks of it.

629
00:44:22,700 --> 00:44:25,900
So, George, what's it like driving
every day

630
00:44:25,900 --> 00:44:27,800
on Scotland's busiest road?

631
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:30,400
Well, actually, most of the time
it's all right.

632
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:32,700
It goes right through the centre of town,

633
00:44:32,700 --> 00:44:36,000
which is, I know, a bit controversial,

634
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:40,500
and some might say stupid,
which it is.

635
00:44:40,500 --> 00:44:42,000
But, at the same time,

636
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:43,500
you can get onto the motorway,

637
00:44:43,500 --> 00:44:46,600
and get out of Glasgow very, very quickly.

638
00:44:48,500 --> 00:44:50,500
But, as you can see, even here -

639
00:44:50,500 --> 00:44:54,300
now, this is quarter to six, it's a Thursday,

640
00:44:54,300 --> 00:44:58,000
the schools are off, and this is
what you get.

641
00:44:58,100 --> 00:45:00,500
The whole of the west of Scotland,

642
00:45:00,500 --> 00:45:02,500
and from the east as well,

643
00:45:02,500 --> 00:45:05,300
all end up on this road.

644
00:45:05,300 --> 00:45:07,100
It's incredible when you think about it.

645
00:45:07,100 --> 00:45:08,700
So everybody from the south,

646
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:14,200
everybody from the east, everybody
from the north,

647
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,100
all end up on this road.

648
00:45:17,100 --> 00:45:20,000
And then as we go along here, it
goes down to two lanes.

649
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,700
So do you have a love/hate
relationship with the road, then?

650
00:45:22,700 --> 00:45:24,800
Yes, I think that's true.

651
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:28,700
I mean, most of the time, as I say,
during the day,

652
00:45:28,700 --> 00:45:31,300
I absolutely love it and I think
it's great.

653
00:45:31,300 --> 00:45:35,100
And then when you get to this time
at night, as you can see,

654
00:45:35,100 --> 00:45:37,800
it's an absolute nightmare.

655
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:40,300
So could you imagine the city
without the road?

656
00:45:40,300 --> 00:45:42,700
Yes, it would have been amazing.

657
00:45:42,700 --> 00:45:46,000
We would have had more tourists than
you wouldn't believe,

658
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:49,100
because although Glasgow,

659
00:45:49,100 --> 00:45:51,100
according to Prince Charles,

660
00:45:51,100 --> 00:45:54,100
is the best-preserved Victorian
city,

661
00:45:54,100 --> 00:45:56,700
if you could imagine what it would
have been like

662
00:45:56,700 --> 00:45:59,000
if they hadn't destroyed
half of it.

663
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:01,100
Of course, you wouldn't get away
with it nowadays.

664
00:46:01,100 --> 00:46:04,000
I mean, could you imagine them
putting a motorway

665
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:06,400
through the heart of Edinburgh?

666
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:13,300
Construction of the M8 began in the mid-1960s

667
00:46:13,300 --> 00:46:16,700
and took over 20 years to complete.

668
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:23,300
The M8 would rip right through the
heart of

669
00:46:23,300 --> 00:46:25,300
thousands of people's homes,

670
00:46:25,300 --> 00:46:29,900
dramatically changing the layout and
look of the city.

671
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:38,400
It was a time of great trauma...

672
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,000
..even for the dead.

673
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:46,400
Behind this imposing church in
Anderston was a graveyard.

674
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:50,400
It lay right in the path of the new motorway.

675
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,400
And so the human remains would have
to be removed.

676
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:57,000
One by one, the dearly departed were disinterred,

677
00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:00,400
and taken to Linn Cemetery six miles away.

678
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:03,300
It wasn't a job for the faint-hearted.

679
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:08,500
But it was work which needed to be done

680
00:47:08,500 --> 00:47:11,400
in order to make way for this,

681
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:17,600
the busiest urban crossing in
the UK - the Kingston Bridge.

682
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:21,400
It carries the M8 motorway westwards
over the River Clyde.

683
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,100
The construction was a mammoth task,

684
00:47:24,100 --> 00:47:27,300
involving 128 hydraulic jacks

685
00:47:27,300 --> 00:47:30,500
lifting the final parts of the
bridge into place.

686
00:47:30,500 --> 00:47:33,300
It was a world record at the time.

687
00:47:35,100 --> 00:47:38,200
In this aerial shot from 1969,

688
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:43,500
you can see the great concrete spans
before they joined up.

689
00:47:43,500 --> 00:47:45,400
Hailed as an engineering marvel,

690
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,400
the bridge opened in June 1970.

691
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:53,400
ARCHIVE: Kingston Bridge, with its
60-foot span, was opened by Queen Elizabeth,

692
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:57,500
the Queen Mother, making her first
visit to Glasgow in five years.

693
00:47:57,500 --> 00:47:59,400
After being greeted by city dignitaries

694
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,100
and performing the official opening
by cutting a tape,

695
00:48:02,100 --> 00:48:05,000
the Queen Mother drove
across the new bridge.

696
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,400
Building the Kingston Bridge was a
huge achievement.

697
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:13,700
But when it was finished,

698
00:48:13,700 --> 00:48:18,500
only half the inner ring road had
actually been completed.

699
00:48:18,500 --> 00:48:20,700
And by the mid-1970s,

700
00:48:20,700 --> 00:48:25,500
public opposition to the other half
was growing louder.

701
00:48:25,500 --> 00:48:30,200
Many Glaswegians were worried about
the inner road network devastating

702
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:34,900
even more homes and communities.

703
00:48:34,900 --> 00:48:39,600
The council abandoned the plan in
the early 1980s.

704
00:48:40,900 --> 00:48:42,800
The incomplete nature of the scheme

705
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:46,400
explains strange sights like this
one behind me -

706
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:48,500
the never-built junction of the

707
00:48:48,500 --> 00:48:51,300
unrealized southern flank
of the ring road.

708
00:48:51,300 --> 00:48:53,100
It's known locally as the ski jump.

709
00:48:53,100 --> 00:48:55,700
It's not hard to see why.

710
00:48:58,300 --> 00:49:00,900
Despite never being fully finished,

711
00:49:00,900 --> 00:49:03,600
what was built of the
inner ring road system

712
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,900
totally transformed Glasgow.

713
00:49:06,900 --> 00:49:10,000
For car users there were direct benefits.

714
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:15,300
Average speed increased and journey
times through the city shortened.

715
00:49:18,100 --> 00:49:23,000
But for lovers of old architecture,
there was much to complain about.

716
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:28,000
A huge motorway had smashed through
a large chunk of the city,

717
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:30,600
changing it forever.

718
00:49:34,300 --> 00:49:38,000
From the sky, it's clear just how
much of Glasgow's Victorian

719
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:41,500
architectural heritage has been erased.

720
00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:50,800
There was a time when we thought
that cars and roads would come to

721
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:53,200
dominate the cities of tomorrow.

722
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:59,500
But not now. What we once put on
show, we now want to hide away.

723
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,000
One of the proposals is this
striking plan

724
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:10,400
to cover up the Charring Cross
section of the M8 with a city park.

725
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:17,700
It remains to be seen if the
mistakes of the past

726
00:50:17,700 --> 00:50:21,300
are solved by the planners of the future.

727
00:50:25,900 --> 00:50:30,500
Glasgow's post-war experience of
grand urban master plans

728
00:50:30,500 --> 00:50:33,300
has been a very mixed one.

729
00:50:33,300 --> 00:50:35,300
Take high-rise living.

730
00:50:36,300 --> 00:50:38,700
In little more than a generation,

731
00:50:38,700 --> 00:50:41,800
attitudes came full circle.

732
00:50:43,100 --> 00:50:46,200
Tower blocks were heralded as smart solutions

733
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:48,800
to inner-city housing shortages.

734
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:53,300
But just a few decades later, they
became part of the problem,

735
00:50:53,300 --> 00:50:57,700
monuments to social decay and deprivation.

736
00:51:04,900 --> 00:51:07,800
Lives lived high in the Glasgow sky

737
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,300
have been brought crashing back down to earth.

738
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:20,200
Over time, new buildings are created

739
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:24,200
to redefine the character of our
urban landscapes.

740
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:30,500
And our vast collection of aerial photography

741
00:51:30,500 --> 00:51:33,800
continues to record these changes.

742
00:51:34,700 --> 00:51:39,000
Laid out in these pictures from
across the 20th century is a graphic

743
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:44,600
illustration of how our cities never
stay still, whether we plan or not,

744
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:48,300
and they illustrate how the view
from above remains the best way of

745
00:51:48,300 --> 00:51:50,400
tracking change.

746
00:51:55,300 --> 00:51:57,500
This is Dundee.

747
00:52:00,300 --> 00:52:03,400
Of all Scotland's big cities,

748
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:08,400
Dundee is the one currently
experiencing the most rapid change.

749
00:52:09,500 --> 00:52:12,400
It's always been a boom and bust city,

750
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:15,400
creating boom and bust architecture.

751
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:18,600
And one new structure stands out.

752
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:21,500
It's a building that's still under construction,

753
00:52:21,500 --> 00:52:24,900
and the best view of it is from the River Tay.

754
00:52:38,500 --> 00:52:41,700
When you first glimpse its unusual form,

755
00:52:41,700 --> 00:52:44,700
it's difficult not to be impressed.

756
00:52:49,300 --> 00:52:52,200
Costing a cool £80 million,

757
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:56,900
it's the new Victoria and Albert
Design Museum.

758
00:52:56,900 --> 00:52:59,900
Just like the pavilions of
Glasgow's Empire Exhibition,

759
00:52:59,900 --> 00:53:01,800
this rather wonderful building is

760
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:05,300
going to present the best of
Scottish creative brilliance,

761
00:53:05,300 --> 00:53:08,300
alongside cutting edge designs from
around the world.

762
00:53:08,300 --> 00:53:11,700
You get the sense that Thomas Tait
would approve.

763
00:53:19,100 --> 00:53:23,400
The harbour has always been key
to the story of Dundee.

764
00:53:23,400 --> 00:53:24,700
Like many cities,

765
00:53:24,700 --> 00:53:28,100
it's where Dundee's fortunes
have risen and fallen

766
00:53:28,100 --> 00:53:31,300
repeatedly over the centuries.

767
00:53:31,300 --> 00:53:33,100
At the start of the 19th century,

768
00:53:33,100 --> 00:53:36,100
a major harbour redevelopment on
reclaimed land,

769
00:53:36,100 --> 00:53:38,600
the work of Thomas Telford,

770
00:53:38,600 --> 00:53:41,900
greatly increased the volume of
merchant traffic.

771
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:44,700
By 1912,

772
00:53:44,700 --> 00:53:47,000
Dundee's new harbour areas occupied

773
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:51,700
119 acres of land
reclaimed from the Tay.

774
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:55,900
The Victoria Dock was built to serve the trade

775
00:53:55,900 --> 00:54:00,300
in one of Dundee's biggest products, jute.

776
00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:06,700
At the industry's peak,

777
00:54:06,700 --> 00:54:09,600
40% of the city worked with jute,

778
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,400
and there were over 130 mills.

779
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:16,300
Each one boasted a thin,
towering chimney,

780
00:54:16,300 --> 00:54:19,800
signatures of the city's skyline.

781
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:26,500
Fast forward to this photograph
taken in 1942.

782
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:30,900
The jute industry was in terminal decline.

783
00:54:30,900 --> 00:54:34,900
Undercut by cheaper labour costs in India.

784
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:49,700
The port fell quiet, the buildings
gradually abandoned.

785
00:54:49,700 --> 00:54:51,700
The surrounding area was buried

786
00:54:51,700 --> 00:54:56,500
under a huge expanse of concrete and car parks.

787
00:54:57,300 --> 00:55:01,800
Was the harbour to remain redundant,
lost forever?

788
00:55:02,300 --> 00:55:06,400
For decades, this question remained unanswered.

789
00:55:07,300 --> 00:55:08,900
Until now that is,

790
00:55:08,900 --> 00:55:12,500
because this area is currently
undergoing a £1 billion,

791
00:55:12,500 --> 00:55:14,600
three decade-long redevelopment.

792
00:55:14,600 --> 00:55:17,700
A grand experiment in cityscaping

793
00:55:17,700 --> 00:55:20,900
that's unparalleled in modern
Scotland.

794
00:55:26,700 --> 00:55:31,900
The VandA Museum is at the centre of
this new vision for the city.

795
00:55:33,700 --> 00:55:38,700
Its director, Philip Long, thinks
it will turn Dundee into a cultural hub

796
00:55:38,700 --> 00:55:40,900
for generations to come.

797
00:55:40,900 --> 00:55:45,900
I think creativity and the creative
economy is a very important part of

798
00:55:45,900 --> 00:55:47,900
the UK's future. And here in Dundee,

799
00:55:47,900 --> 00:55:52,600
it builds on some of the historical
skills that were here in the city.

800
00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:56,400
The design of the building itself is
about re-emphasising a connection

801
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:58,000
between the city and the sea.

802
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:02,000
Part of its brief to the architect
was to help make that connection and

803
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:06,900
Kengo Kuma, our architect, does that
wonderfully well.

804
00:56:06,900 --> 00:56:10,700
Dundee's not a large city, 150,000
people or thereabouts,

805
00:56:10,700 --> 00:56:12,600
so I think that when one understands that,

806
00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:15,700
and then the scale of a project like
the waterfront,

807
00:56:15,700 --> 00:56:19,300
with the VandA Dundee at its forefront,

808
00:56:19,300 --> 00:56:22,000
it is really, really impressive.

809
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:35,200
This is a structure that wants to
transform a whole city

810
00:56:35,200 --> 00:56:36,700
through force of will.

811
00:56:36,700 --> 00:56:40,800
Even in its unfinished form, you can
feel its self-confidence.

812
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:42,600
It shouts, "Look at me!"

813
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:46,000
And of course you do, you can't help yourself.

814
00:56:53,700 --> 00:56:55,000
And from the air,

815
00:56:55,000 --> 00:56:59,600
you can see how this striking new
building fits into the cityscape -

816
00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:05,800
how new and old fit together like a
jigsaw puzzle of the city's history.

817
00:57:13,700 --> 00:57:18,000
If you want to understand the
stories of our cities and towns,

818
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:22,000
there's no better place to be than
in the sky.

819
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:27,800
It all seemed so obvious from up here.

820
00:57:35,700 --> 00:57:41,300
You can see the proud or crumbling
traces of the past and the present,

821
00:57:41,300 --> 00:57:46,200
you can see cities and towns
changing before your eyes.

822
00:57:47,500 --> 00:57:53,000
And feel the restless need to keep
on remaking themselves.

823
00:57:54,900 --> 00:57:57,200
And you can imagine their futures,

824
00:57:57,200 --> 00:58:02,100
always waiting somewhere over the horizon.

825
00:58:06,500 --> 00:58:09,700
Next time, the fascinating story of

826
00:58:09,700 --> 00:58:14,500
the mysteries uncovered by
pioneering aerial archaeologists.

827
00:58:14,500 --> 00:58:17,500
From hidden Roman camps to a field

828
00:58:17,500 --> 00:58:20,500
where the very concept of time emerged,

829
00:58:20,500 --> 00:58:22,800
how the God's-eye view provides

830
00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:27,700
an extraordinary window into our ancient past.