Cumbernauld is no loss but mistakes are still being made

ANYONE who ever had the misfortune to be stuck in miles-long tailbacks on the A80 at the Auchenkilns roundabout in Cumbernauld was at least consoled that they were spending hours staring at a screen icon.

Just over the fence, through the fog of diesel fumes, sat Abronhill High

School, the place where Gregory first set eyes on his girl, in the 1981 classic Bill Forsyth coming-of-age film Gregory’s

Girl.

Thankfully, the roundabout has now gone, replaced with the M80, which has cut journey times from Glasgow to anywhere north by at least 12 hours, particularly on Bank Holidays.

Even the school has now been demolished, leaving Gregory nowhere to play football now, although to be fair he has probably outgrown kickabouts on blaes pitches.

You can only be so old to get away with skinned knees, after all.

Now, another part of Cumbernauld which featured in the film has been consigned to the skip with the announcement that the notorious The Centre is going to be demolished.

The “centre” of Cumbernauld, a most brutal, brutalist megastructure, was endlessly lauded as it took shape more than half a century ago.

Now North Lanarkshire Council has agreed a deal in principle to purchase The Centre, a building dubbed the “Plook on the Plinth” after repeatedly winning Scotland’s Carbuncle Awards.

The local authority plans to redevelop the famous structure, which was opened in a blaze of publicity and New Town optimism in 1967.

Their plans are part of a £3.5billionpound effort to “re-imagine” towns across the region, putting schools and public services back at the centre of urban communities.

It is a common sense proposal on paper and will be watched carefully by other councils in Scotland suffering from the same problems as Cumbernauld.

Virtually every town and large community in Scotland is currently suffering from the loss of facilities and businesses, leaving residents no option but to travel by car to go to supermarkets or appointments.

When the new towns were devised to decant hundreds of thousands from the city slums they promised a kind of utopia for the incomers.

The towns, Cumbernauld, East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Livingston and Irvine, looked great in artists’ impressions, as they were all sleek roundabouts and comfortable housing.

But the problem with them was that beyond the housing and roundabouts, there wasn’t really much else for locals to do.

To try and accommodate this, planners then decided it would be a great idea to build brutalist monstrosities in town centres to serve as hubs.

There was also little or no public transport links to nearby cities or towns, forcing the residents to drive everywhere.

In today’s climate it seems an absurd concept and might be getting used in architectural school lectures to illustrate how it shouldn’t be done.

It is the same as the vast housing schemes built around Glasgow such as Drumchapel, Castlemilk and Easterhouse in the 1950s.

Castlemilk, in particular, which was built at the top of a hill on the very periphery of the city to house 34,000 people with one bus route in and out and no rail link.

They appeared to forget that these 34,000 people need public transport and decent facilities to thrive as a community.

To this day, residents don’t have a proper supermarket, forcing them to travel a mile or so by bus to get a shop or an even longer journey to get a decent-sized supermarket.

Wandering around Scotland post-covid it is not hard to spot vast private housing estates being built virtually everywhere.

With exotic names such as Everest View or Serengeti Meadows, they evoke ideas of marauding wildebeest sweeping majestically through the local park and giraffes grazing by the duck pond.

In reality, the views are in fact just rows of similar houses stretching ever further into the distance.

Of course, Scotland currently has a severe shortage of quality family homes, so the demand is there for these large estates and many do look pretty pleasant.

But, again, most are on the periphery of towns and it is not clear what community facilities are going to be built.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this will cause congestion on the roads and overcrowding in schools and medical practices.

Maybe planners haven’t learned from the past – it’s time they did.