Glaswegians are used to the sound of an explosion and a building being turned into rubble and dust. You may remember 2014 when there were plans to blow up one of the Red Road blocks as part of the Commonwealth Games celebrations until someone pointed out that destroying flats which used to people’s homes for a moment of flippant entertainment might not be such a good idea after all. Fair point.

But this is what Glasgow does isn’t it? Huge parts of the city were pulled down in the 60s to make way for motorways and to move people from tenements into high-rises. Forty years later, parts of the city were pulled down again when the high-rises were judged to have been a mistake. And we must surely prepare for the next big wave of demolitions in another 40 years when attitudes change again. Build, demolish, build, demolish, build, demolish.

I did think the recent furore over the Wyndford flats in Maryhill might have been a chance to think about whether the build-demolish strategy was the right one and to properly consider what we should do with the high-rises that are left over in Glasgow. The housing association that wants to pull down Wyndford says the flats are in a poor state, a lot of the residents don’t like them, and the 300 or so homes that will replace them will be better (most of them will be social housing; some will be for mid-market rent).

As you may know, a group of campaigners disagree and have been fighting the decision to pull down the high-rises and one of the things they’ve said is that, rather than demolishing the flats with all the environmental destruction and waste that inevitably goes with it, perhaps we should be avoiding the destruction and waste by improving and retro-fitting the buildings that are already there. To me, this........

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