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Case study:
Data City: Integration and visualisation of spatial and socio-economic data in an urban context

The model

The area: Hillhead, Glasgow

Fig. 10 Study area

Hillhead is regarded as a neighbourhood which is highly significant historically and architecturally. In the Victorian city, Hillhead was one of the earliest of the West End suburbs where wealthy citizens settled from the mid-nineteenth onwards in an attempt to escape the increasingly poor conditions in central Glasgow, and the commercialisation of earlier suburbs such as Blythswood. It contains many buildings of architectural note and was developed at an earlier date than Dowanhill, Kelvinside or Hyndland. It is an area also more varied in its building types and styles.

The Hillhead area lies nestled within the wider West End of Glasgow, itself a product of middle class migration to the newly created suburbs of the mid-nineteenth century and up until the pre-first world war period. Urban development was preceded by the use of the area for country estates by the merchant classes, including their country houses and, before that, purely by agricultural and mineral extraction activities. Feuing plans were drawn up but it was not until the construction of Great Western Road in the 1840's that the area was opened up for urban development. The population rose steadily thereafter from 200 in 1841 to over 2000 twenty years later as development began to take off. Residents were overwhelmingly professionals with 80 per cent in this class; the majority of the remaining population were servants for the affluent households in the area. In the Hillhead burgh the working classes were so negligible a fraction that they could be ignored. For more than 20 years until 1891 Hillhead was an independent burgh, a status which was sought originally in order to improve street maintenance, improve security, and assist the appreciation of property values.

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The topography of the area partly explained the socio-economic status of the newly developing suburb. The post-glacial clay deposits in the form of small hills, or drumlins, increased the cost of development while the views that they offered enhanced values. However, other factors were also important in creating a middle class area. Migration away from the crowded and dirty inner city by the middle classes, improving transport connections, a prevailing wind from the west for two thirds of the year and local green spaces all contributed to the status of the West End in general and the Hillhead area in particular.

The earliest parts of Hillhead as it now stands date from about 1850, mostly at the eastern side of the study area around Otago Street and Gibson Street, and contain some of the oldest residential buildings in Glasgow. Residential development continued throughout the nineteenth century so that almost all the gap sites in the area were filled in by 1900. The vast majority of new development, as a condition of feu charters, was residential, and houses and flats were aimed at the wealthy middle classes, a mix of superior tenements and terraced houses, with some earlier detached and double villas. The large size of the houses, including many tenement flats which occupied two floors and ran to as many as ten rooms, was later to prove a disadvantage as the wealth of the area diminished.

As the nineteenth century progressed, Hillhead was outstripped as a desirable and fashionable area by the development of more distant areas of the West End such as Dowanhill, Kelvinside and Hyndland. Alongside the residential development came institutions such as churches, schools, and shopping facilities along Great Western Road, and later, Byres Road. Some areas at the fringes of Hillhead, such as parts of Byres Road and the lanes leading from it and Otago Street overlooking the former railway yards on the floor of the Kelvin Valley at Kelvinbridge, developed more of an industrial or commercial character and retained this into the late twentieth century.

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Over the last 100 years the nineteenth century physical fabric and street pattern of Hillhead has remained largely intact. However, there have been some major alterations and additions. Most significant of these is the spillover of the University of Glasgow from its site on Gilmorehill across University Avenue into Hillhead starting in the inter-war period. Hillhead has seen significant demolitions to accommodate University developments and the construction of buildings such as the Reading Room, student unions, the University Library, the Refectory, the Stevenson Building and teaching blocks, including the Boyd Orr and Adam Smith buildings.

The University has also taken over former villas and tenements and used them for student accommodation and for non-residential uses. The presence of the University has also helped to shape the area's social character, with student and staff demand impacting on the housing market and on the nature of local services, such as shops, cafes and bars. Other intrusions since the turn of the twentieth century include selected demolition and the replacement of residential accommodation, although some small gap sites created through demolition remain in the area. University Avenue was also realigned in the 1970s resulting in property demolition. Most recently, the expansion of Hillhead High School (built in the 1920's) has incorporated a row of terraced villas, changed the street pattern and incorporated, for school use, one of the few open spaces of the area.

The twentieth century also saw important changes to the housing market which led to profound social change in Hillhead. Its current character is now very different to that at the beginning of the century. In its heyday the Hillhead area was a predominately 'respectable' bourgeois residential area, with most of its property let unfurnished or owner occupied. From the 1920's onwards single tenants (or single owner occupiers) of larger houses were hard to find and houses were converted into flats or turned into institutional uses such as hotels, nursing homes and schools, or taken over by the University. Many dwellings were also divided and let as bed-sit rooms.

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Hillhead by the end of the twentieth century was a very diverse area and offered a distinct contrast with other parts of the West End. Large parts of it were dominated by university uses and by heavy pedestrian traffic associated with the University. While some of the residential parts resembled other, more mainstream housing markets in the West End many streets were dominated by furnished private renting in the form of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and are areas of more marginal owner occupation.

In the late 1980's the Council's North West Area Management Committee identified Hillhead as an area of 'extreme concern'. It was also reported in the early 1990's in a report by the Council's planning department, which was regarded as highly sensitive and not for public consumption:

'problems of decay and dereliction and demolition have now escalated to a point where there is serious concern about the future of Hillhead as a popular residential neighbourhood.'

Socially, the area is diverse, with large numbers of students and young people, some somewhat older professional single people and couples, plus a few elderly residents who have been there for many years. There are very few people in their middle years, and few children, in spite of the presence of some local authority primary and secondary school within the area as well as two private schools. Compared to many residential areas, the population is relatively transient, which is relevant to the attitudes which might prevail towards the long-term maintenance of property.

Last updated: December 4, 2003