CONTESTED VISIONS OF A MODERN CITY - PLANNING AND POETRY IN POSTWAR GLASGOW

The author draws on the distinctions between representations of space and spaces of representation contained in Lefebvre's Production of Spa ce, and examines the postwar modernisation of Glasgow. In the first pa rt of the paper he considers the images of the city presented in the c ity's two postwar master plans; one drawn up by central government, th e other by local government. These two very different representations of the space of Glasgow as a modern city sparked off a political strug gle over the making of the built environment which has left its imprin t on the city's contemporary urban landscape. In the second part of th e paper he uses the work of several Glasgow poets to illuminate the co nsequences of the modernisation process for the lived spaces of the ci ty-the spaces of representation. The poets' reading of the modem city vividly illustrates the effects of the colonisation of concrete space by the abstract spaces of the master plans. Weaving together these two different, but closely related, discourses about the city-planning an d poetry-he provides a specific example of the significance of Lefebvr e's conceptual framework for making sense of the urban landscape of th e modern city.