The four corners junction in Glasgow demonstrates a lot of what's wrong with the city. But there may be signs of hope, says Mark Smith

To be honest, if I can, I avoid it, but sometimes you can’t. Either you’re getting the subway, or you’re heading to or from the train station, or you’re visiting the best record shop in the city (Fopp on Union Street) and you find yourself once again amid the grot and the grime and the gangs at the four corners or, as I like to call it when I’m feeling melodramatic, the junction of doom. And every time I’m there it’s the same feeling: embarrassed for the city I love.

If you’ve been through it or near it, you’ll know what I mean. It’s where Argyle Street and Jamaica Street and Union Street meet and it’s one of the busiest but also one of the most notorious and unpleasant parts of Glasgow. The busyness I get: you’ve got St Enoch subway down the road and Central Station up the road and you’ve got shops and fast-food places and pubs and all the rest of it. But it’s not busyness that’s the problem really, it’s the rest of it: the four corners is the place where, more than any other I can think of, all the problems Glasgow faces intersect, with results you can see for yourself.

A number of things are going on, and have been for ages. First, the decline of shopping and office working: there used to be lots of big businesses at or near the junction like Tower Records and Boots; you might also remember Beaverbrook’s the jewellers and Burtons menswear too. All gone now of course – the most recent to move out was Pizza Hut last year – and it’s not........

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