Bridges to Somewhere: A Tale of Three Glasgow Bridges

Social Infrastructure and neighbourhood renewal

My focus here is on the importance of social infrastructure for the economic and social regeneration of neglected spaces in towns and cities, as exemplified by the role of three relatively recent additions to Glasgow’s impressive collection of bridges. There are 16 over the river Clyde alone, and many more spanning canals, motorways, railway lines and other features with the potential to divide one part of the city from another. The bridges I will refer to are officially known as the Anderston bridge over the M8 motorway close to the city centre, the Finnieston bridge (also known as the Clyde Arc from its opening) over the river Clyde and the Sighthill Bridge also over the M8.  They each have more colloquial names bestowed by the local community, namely ‘the Bridge to Nowhere’, the ‘Squinty’ bridge and the ‘Rusty’ bridge respectively. A brief description of each will show why.

The Bridge to Nowhere

The controversial route chosen for the construction of the Edinburgh – Glasgow motorway, the M8, in the 1960s cut a great swathe through Glasgow city centre and many of its local neighbourhoods, including the bustling communities of Charing Cross and neighboring Anderston. The bridge was designed as a pedestrian footpath over the motorway and intended to ensure that the Anderston community was not cut off from the rest of the city.  Begun in the 1970s, but funding ran out and construction came to an end leaving the unfinished bridge 40 feet in the air. It remained an embarrassment to city leaders and politicians and did nothing to enhance the area for local residents. It wasn’t until 2012 that further funding became available, and the bridge was completed in 2013 some 40 years after work on it had first commenced.

The Clyde Arc (the Squinty bridge)

Opened in 2006, the bridge connects important cultural areas of the city (the Clyde Auditorium and the Scottish Exhibition Centre) on the north bank with Pacific Quay and the Glasgow Science Centre and Govan community on the south bank. It carries two traffic lanes, one for public transport and the other for commercial and private traffic, and also has pedestrian and cycle paths. It takes its name from the very distinctive steel arch which dominates the design, its innovative curved design and from the fact that it crosses the river at an angle.

The Sighthill (or Rusty) bridge

Very distinctive again is the Sighthill bridge, opened a year ago in 2023, and the centerpiece of a major urban renewal project intended to re-connect Sighthill, one of the communities most disrupted by the construction of the M8, with the centre of the city. It carries a path for pedestrians and cyclists and provides a new and much more convenient route to the city for Sighthill and Springburn residents.  It takes its name from its appearance: it is a steel construction which is long-lasting and needs little maintenance.  With extensive landscaping and communal spaces and new mixed-tenure housing, the bridge is the symbol of the transformation of the Sighthill area.

Social Infrastructure

All sorts of physical infrastructures are necessary to sustain life in urban environments. However imperfectly, they provide all sorts of essential services such as water supplies, health services, education, urban mobility, food distribution and technological structures for communication and economic transactions. All sorts on infrastructures sit alongside each other: together they can be thought of as the basis for building the collective capacity of cities to sustain social and economic life within them.

The extent to which the collective capacity is realized depends crucially on the interaction between these different infrastructures and the urban residents. Access to infrastructures may not be equally available to all with the consequence of limiting the ‘life worlds’ of some, increasing vulnerability and reducing inclusiveness in participation in what the city has to offer.

Following the work of Klinenberg, the category of infrastructures I am focused on here is social infrastructure. Social infrastructure is the infrastructures of social life, the places and spaces which facilitate activity, social connection and exchange. Typically seen as including libraries, parks and public spaces, shops and markets, pedestrian walkways, launderettes, gyms, churches, and meeting halls, they comprise the collective public life of streets and neighbourhoods. They help provide a safe public social life for those who may be vulnerable, along with rich cultural possibilities.

Social infrastructure influences the sociality of a neighbourhood through the opportunities it creates for making social connections and the character of the interactions and activities which result. Sociality is closely related to the ‘placeness’ of a neighbourhood, to community identity and inclusivity.

Bridges as social infrastructure

So what has been the contribution of our selected bridges to the quality of life in Glasgow? How has it added to the sociality of the city in general and to the communities they connect?

There are numerous facets to their contribution.

-          Although they are not grand structures crossing spectacular natural features, each in their own right presented engineering challenges which have led to innovative design and construction solutions.

-          Each has added an interesting feature to the Glasgow cityscape and have become familiar landmarks to residents and visitors alike.

-          Each has supported an environmentally friendly approach to urban mobility, designed to encourage walking and cycling by providing new, shorter and safer routes between communities and re-connecting neighbourhoods with city facilities.

-          Each of them has opened up access to important locations for economic development and urban renewal of former dockland areas on the river front.  The squinty bridge in particular has contributed to the development and accessibility of the city’s media quarter at Pacific Quay and the exhibition centre and entertainment centre on the north bank.

-          Each of them has enabled gains in sociality in the areas in which they are located, and in the case of the rusty bridge to a substantial extent. The emphasis on walking and cycling offers greatly extended opportunities for social contact and interaction and has re-vitalized community identity in otherwise areas of the city.   

-          Each has enriched the quality of life of residents by improving access to shops, colleges, cultural venues and employment opportunities in the city centre.

Bridges are usually seen as important features of the physical infrastructure of urban areas. They are less often included in lists of social infrastructure as discussed earlier. Each of the bridges referred to here represents an important piece of social infrastructure. There is an important dimension of sociality in these otherwise non-social physical structures. The contrasting contexts for each of these bridges illustrates well the different impacts of social infrastructure on the social and economic life of cities and city neighbourhoods. As important contributions to city life just described, they clearly should be included in urban planning on this basis. Understanding the impact on sociality overall and the benefits to particular social groups and communities should be part of the impact analysis of infrastructure planning.  Bridges are often more than crossing points. They can be bridges to somewhere: in these cases to social renewal and new ideas of place.

Further reading

Klinenberg, Eric (2018): Palaces for the People: How to build a more equal and united society, Penguin Random House.

Latham, Alan and Layton, Jack (2019): Social Infrastructure and the Public Life of Cities: Studying urban sociality and public space  Geography Compass volume 13, issue 7