There are few segments of Glasgow city centre that have seen more change than Townhead and Cowcaddens.
Compare a side-by-side aerial view of the districts from before and after 1970, and you'll see a stark difference.
Once dominated by over-populated 19th century tenements, the historic districts witnessed seismic changes in the 1960s as a massive urban improvement scheme gathered pace.
Declared a Comprehensive Development Area in the 1962, much of old Townhead, including the near-fabled Parliamentary Road, was wiped from the map to make room for the M8, a new university quarter and high-rise housing.
Old Cowcaddens also fast became a distant memory, as tower blocks and various, grand cultural and educational developments, such as the Scottish Piping Centre, Scottish media offices and Glasgow Caledonian University, took the place of traditional stone tenements.
Bit by bit, familiar streets and buildings vanished, as the community moved out and the urban landscape was altered forever. In Townhead, the population dropped from and estimated 19,000 in 1960 to around 7,000. Cowcaddens witnessed much of the same, as families relocated to the outskirts of the city.
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Much of the community that remained was re-housed in new multi-storey dwellings. By 1968, Townhead's skyline was dominated by four 25-storey tower blocks (the Tounheid flats), with 24-storey Dundasvale 'twins' being constructed in Cowcaddens and another 23-storey block rising a decade later.
In the 1980s, Professor Miles Glendinning captured photographs of the Townhead and Cowcaddens tower blocks, all of which are still standing today. You can view them by clicking on the link below.
A University of Edinburgh project called Tower Block UK, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, has been collecting and preserving Professor Glendinning's images of post-war high rise housing as important pieces of our heritage and social history. The pictures featured here are from the extensive collection.
To find out more, click here.