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George Square ripples out with North Hanover Street Avenuisation

April 8 2025

George Square ripples out with North Hanover Street Avenuisation

The City of Glasgow is progressing to the next phase of its Avenues programme next month, when it moves on-site with public realm improvements between North Hanover Street and Kyle Street.

In tandem with a makeover of George Square, the latest works are being undertaken by Civic Engineers to improve connectivity to the newly built Sighthill Bridge via Buchanan Bus Station - itself up for redevelopment.

Councillor Angus Millar said: "North Hanover Street, like the Duke Street Avenue already underway, is about making those entry points into our city centre much more attractive. But these are also increasingly residential locations, so it's about improving city centre areas where more people are choosing to live."

To be built from May to November the route aims to improve active travel options north of the city centre, funded jointly by the Scottish and UK governments to the tune of £1.72m each. This will fund tree planting along the route, replacement paving, fresh road surfaces and a segregated cycle lane.

The upgraded route will link new homes at Sighthill to George Square
The upgraded route will link new homes at Sighthill to George Square

16 Comments

Fat Bloke on Tour
#1 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 8 Apr 2025 at 10:19 AM
Six month build plan -- now that is more like it ...
EM0
#2 Posted by EM0 on 8 Apr 2025 at 10:59 AM
None of the avenues plans have enough trees to really feel like the environment is softened and that the harder edges of the city with lots of 70's architecture have the harder edges taken off them because of the trees. I was recently in London and there recent avenues developments with two long lines of trees planted quite closely together do exactly that. This is more like a "replace pavements" programme than anything else. So far it has all been hugely disappointing Holland St included!
Morty
#3 Posted by Morty on 8 Apr 2025 at 11:34 AM
Wow, could they make these renders any more appealing... although I will concede these are pretty accurate to how grim the final designs will inevitably be, so hats off to the CGI guy on that one!
Roddy_
#4 Posted by Roddy_ on 8 Apr 2025 at 13:38 PM
@#1
Surely 6 months is far too long given your secret fast-track construction programming ability? :)
Roddy_
#5 Posted by Roddy_ on 8 Apr 2025 at 15:05 PM
Anything that imporves the public realm here is welcome, but what the second image really shows is the need for some kind of urban intensification given we're only 2 blocks away from George Square. Blank frontages, gap sites, poor edges etc etc. The city runs out far too quickly. There is, of course the DRF for the area but recent initiatives from the council (consultation on the open public space in Townhead) doesn't quite cut it and the built fabric appears long past its best.
Townhead needs a root and branch makeover, with densification to support some proper neighbourhood shops and services. Could you imagine if we introduced New Gorbals principles here, but upped the ante with denser typologies, proper perimeter blocks and linear park on the ghost lines of Parliamentary Rd?
Remember the housing Expo in Inverness back in 2010 or so - we could do with one here to demonstrate a real commitment to repopulating the city centre and make Townhead a neighbourhood worth walking that extra 2 or 3 blocks from George Square.
MR T MCNELLIS
#6 Posted by MR T MCNELLIS on 9 Apr 2025 at 14:10 PM
More new traffic jams caused by narrowing of roads to facilitate cycle lanes that very few use. Vehicles stuck in congested traffic, churning out fumes. So much for cleaner air in LEZ zones. Well done Gcc. Who's kidding who?
Lovely
#7 Posted by Lovely on 10 Apr 2025 at 08:54 AM
It's unbelievable that the same basic urban design and transport mistakes are being rolled out again and again across the city – a ridiculous waste of time, money and precious resource.

It feels like they actively dislike cyclists, drivers, pedestrians, small businesses, community and our planet's ecology with this concrete jungle nonsense.

Admittedly this design looks fractionally better than some previous versions. So perhaps there is some small hope. Am not holding my breath though.
hanOver the discourse
#8 Posted by hanOver the discourse on 10 Apr 2025 at 14:34 PM
#5 That reads almost verbatim like my postgrad thesis project, right down to focusing on the townhead estate. Of all the Urban Realm regulars you seem to be the most consistently on the money, it's nice to see some sense among the noise.
Roddy_
#9 Posted by Roddy_ on 10 Apr 2025 at 15:23 PM
@#8
Very kind.
Seems to make a lot of sense for Townhead. New active travel routes are great, but what about a proper vision for a new neighbourhood ?

I should also say that when I mention root and branch, I do not mean tabula rasa development. We need a msterplan for the whole area but implemented incrementally.
Fat Bloke on Tour
#10 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 10 Apr 2025 at 19:42 PM
Yes / yes / yes ...

That is what Glesga needs -- more middle class welfare for masterplanners.

No / No / thrice no.
D Keltie
#11 Posted by D Keltie on 11 Apr 2025 at 11:55 AM
#5 Are you sitting fuming in the traffic? If so, you are the traffic. Too many cars/vans trying to use city centre routes. City centres are about people not cars. Find another route.
Roddy_
#12 Posted by Roddy_ on 11 Apr 2025 at 12:40 PM
@#11
I honestly haven't the slightest idea what this post means in relation to my post. And in the context of having FBOT as a contributor to the tread - that is truly impressive work.
Roddy_
#13 Posted by Roddy_ on 11 Apr 2025 at 12:43 PM
@#10

Please expand /explain if you can. :) Joined up sentences and making some general sense will help.
Roderick the Brave
#14 Posted by Roderick the Brave on 12 Apr 2025 at 11:16 AM
I will try to help.

Perhaps your friends at #11 and maybe even #10 are trying to point out to you that the policies you support of building non-functional cycling lanes, blocking parking spaces and destroying small business, removing second lanes on roads, blocking junctions etc. and generally bad design messing up the flow of traffic are wasting money and resources plus creating clouds of fumes and stress as cars idle in chaotic badly designed urban transport chaos.

All this while we still wait for the real alternatives to come along.

And I know you will now ask this as your main metric here is to constantly ask other people to explain themselves in great detail and justify their positions rather than you explaining the actual failure of the schemes that you relentlessly support so I will have a go and do that for you as well.

These would be-

Free and fast proper public mass transit, good urban design, fast cycle highways, focus on good efficient traffic flow while we still have cars and proper shared space for low speeds in the city centre.

And an immediate stop to car bound green field suburban developments that are still being built at a large pace.

Furthermore the regeneration of beautiful buildings and inner areas that have been forgotten about, only talked about as a possible 'retrofit' fashion accessory that rarely materialises in reality.

Of course these don’t come with the special heavy funding and shiny virtue signalling nonsense baubles and propaganda that your policies come with and would involve a lot of difficult hard work and design nouce to implement.

So many people in the industry continue to support the status quo of total failure and splattering our money and precious resource to create pollution with brainless sticking plasters that don’t work.

Time to wake up and smell the noxious anti-human fumes you are creating.
Roddy_
#15 Posted by Roddy_ on 12 Apr 2025 at 17:51 PM

Yeah.., erm... not an especially helpful contribution given that the 2nd and 6th paragraphs seem to contradict each other. It does have a ranty and and resentful tone that doesn't really help the cause either.
Heaven forbid asking anyone to 'explain or justify themselves' :) However it would be helpful if you could back up the claims in the 2nd paragraph with facts rather than just making assertions.
Mark
#16 Posted by Mark on 12 Apr 2025 at 23:04 PM
#11 - I'm with Roddy, your points don't really make sense.

"Are you sitting fuming in the traffic? If so, you are the traffic." - That's just a cheap slogan used by environmental protestors. In practice you need to provide alternative capacity on trains, trams, subways, buses before you starting reducing the car-carrying capacity of roads. Glasgow hasn't done that, presumably because it's more difficult and expensive than building bike lanes.

"Too many cars/vans trying to use city centre routes." - Vans and lorries need to make deliveries to businesses: without them, you'll have no jobs, no activity, and no city centre. That would be counter-productive, wouldn't it?

"City centres are about people not cars." - City centres are about everything we collectively need in order to make them work properly. Again, if Glasgow provided decent public transport, there wouldn't be so many car journeys.

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