Who belongs to Glasgow?

## Learning outcomes

### 1 Image of a city

# 1.1 Why Glasgow?

Glasgow fulfilled our aims and was also an interesting case study having, arguably, been the most successful among British cities in developing/manufacturing a new identity in the ‘post-industrial’ era. Glasgow illustrates:

- (a) power relations, reflected in:

  - constructed images – ‘Glasgow's miles better’ was a deliberate campaign to improve the image of Glasgow.

  - contested images – ‘City of Culture’ – but whose culture?

  - multiple identities – ‘Clydebuilt’, ‘Red Clydeside’, ‘Shock City’, ‘Glasgow's Alive’ are all images of Glasgow.

  - whose interests these dominant images represent and whose are ignored.

- (b) local-global relations – phrases like ‘second city of Empire’ and ‘a great European city’ reflect how Glasgow's (local) uniqueness has been constructed out of wider (global) interdependence.

Figure 1 Glasgow
Figure 1

OpenLearn - Who belongs to Glasgow?
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