Best has yet to come for a city with designs on future
“IF Perth is the heart of Scotland then Dundee must be the armpit,” said someone at a meeting I attended some years ago.
Though I forcefully disagreed, the comment reflected disgust at a historic waterfront bedevilled by unsightly concrete blocks, a rotten ring-road and a railway station that served more as a warning, than a welcome, to visitors.
It definitely fell short of what William McGonagall called the “beautiful scenery along the banks of the silvery Tay”.
Dundee is Scotland’s fourth city and was historically known for jute, jam and journalism. At its height, the jute industry employed more than 40 per cent of the able workforce in Dundee.
The decline of that industry ushered in a period of manufacturing malaise leading to the deprivation that has clung to the city for decades.
Dundee has topped European tables for underage pregnancy, unemployment and alcohol and substance misuse.
So how has this city emerged from the ruins with a new-found status as the “coolest little city in Britain” – according to GQ magazine – and as one of the Wall Street Journal’s top 10 “hot destinations”?
I met Mike Galloway, who will soon retire as executive director of city development, to talk about the city’s journey from austerity to prosperity.
Born in Glasgow’s east end, he studied town planning in Dundee and he has presided over regeneration projects in Glasgow, Manchester and London.
But it’s Dundee he has fallen in love with since his return to the crumbling city he left in the 70s.
Galloway said: “When I came back to Dundee in 1997, we did a city-wide audit and spoke to people across the city.
“Rather than develop a plan we liked and seek their approval, the people owned the process by offering their input into the construction of the masterplan which, when presented back to them at community centres across the city, gained well over 90 per cent approval.”
The masterplan, as Galloway describes it, is a 30-year vision which is only two thirds of the way to completion.
When the regeneration was approved in 2000, the Scottish Parliament was just establishing itself.
An early innovation was the City Growth Fund, which Dundee successfully applied for on four occasions. Other beneficiaries chose to spread resources more widely in an attempt to keep everyone happy.
Dundee, by contrast, decided consistently to invest the money in one single project – the waterfront.
The regeneration has not taken place without cost. I met a former head chef who lost his job as the establishment where he worked made way for the new public space Slessor Gardens.
But Galloway points to the jobs created through new retail and business ventures.
There have also been complaints about the controversial steel structure sitting in front of the V&A.
He urges people to have faith that the “unpleasant looking steel structure we currently have is a far cry from what will soon be an aesthetically pleasing limestone building”.
He added: “I would simply say to critics – ‘just wait and see.’”
Galloway appears as passionate about the regeneration of the individual as the environment, setting out what he expects from companies who want to set up shop at the waterfront.
He said: “I make it clear to any interested businesses that, first, they must prioritise the employment of local people and, second, they must pay the real living wage.”
He added: “For me, the presence of a real living wage for local people is as important as the V&A itself.”
I asked him if he feared Dundee could slip back to the economic arthritis of old.
He said: “My greatest fear would be that someone else, 70 years from now, has to do this all over again.
“This is when Dundee really needs to holds its nerve. The city is at a tipping point but the best is yet to come.”
How has this city emerged from ruins of unemployment and alcohol?