Green factors?

A while ago a friend got in touch to ask if there was any such thing as a Green factor in Glasgow. Sick of the service he’s getting from his current factor, he wanted one with an eco-friendly approach to building management to start making improvements in his tenement.

Sadly I had to say that I couldn’t help. It’s not just that I’ve never heard of a property factor making any attempt to talk up their environmentally responsible approach… for most of us the factor is just another bill to pay with little in the way of proactive management to show for it. There have been moves to weed out the worst factors, and the most exploitative practices. But we really shouldn’t stop there – let’s demand the best, not just accept a disappointing and overpriced bog-standard service.

This is such a missed opportunity, because the potential of Glasgow’s tenements is fantastic. The fragmented ownership of most tenement buildings and nature of the physical space we share (typically smelly and poorly maintained bin sheds) makes it hard to create any sense of community. But if we can take some greater control over our buildings, and demand a higher standard of services for our hard-earned cash, we could do what only a handful of tenement communities have acheived so far and create a space that’s playful, productive and healthy. We could be meeting our neighbours more, growing food, generating our own energy (and investing in the fabric of our buildings so that we waste less of it) or just enjoying a quiet green space away from the noise and the traffic of the street.

Over the last few years, the Greens have pushed hard for investment in Scotland’s housing stock. We started where the cheapest and easier measures were waiting to be done – like loft and cavity wall insulation. But tenements need a very different range of measures to achieve the transformation that’s possible, and during this new session at Holyrood I’ll be making that approach a priority. Watch this space!

Pow-wow with GOW

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the ‘GOW Community’ – so called because their tenement building is formed from Gibson St, Otago Street and Westbank Quadrant in Glasgow’s West End. Before I tell you a bit about the transformation they’ve achieved, I just want to point out how important that distinction is. Most people who live in tenements (there are lots of us in Glasgow!) are most aware of the street we live on, but we don’t often think about our relationship with the rest of the building. Tenements could provide the opportunity for a community to look inward and see shared space, shared resouces, and the chance to meet and learn from one another. Even GOW’s logo suggests this perception of a tenement…

Like many people in Glasgow, residents of the streets which make up GOW once looked out onto a backcourt which was filthy, neglected and unsafe…

Through their persistent efforts to clean up that backcourt they’ve succeeded not only in creating a delightful and welcoming shared space, but also in creating a community which is stronger and more creative. They’ve developed services for themselves like better recycling, and they’ve got ideas for the future which lots of us in Glasgow could learn from.

Some people would no doubt say that this is the trendy West End, and that they have advantages not shared elsewhere in the city. But the reality is that this is a really challenging place to build up community links – there are lots of commercial units on Gibson Street, and the needs of residents and businesses don’t always coincide; there’s also a very high percentage of short term tenancies here since it’s so close to the University. That means a rapid turnover of residents, but also some HMO landlords have been really hard to engage with constructively. It’s sad to say, but some private sector landlords to treat their properties simply as cash machines, and have little interest in looking after them as homes or as part of a community.

So the GOW residents have done something quite remarkable. Even just looking at the bin stores, which are covered to keep them dry and cleverly designed to be relatively hidden, you can see what a transformation could be achieved in tenements across the city with the right commitment and imagination.

It could be the most transformational experience for Glasgow if all our tenements offered a view not of a smelly, dirty, walled-off bin store for each close, taking up all of the space within the building, but instead a well designed shared facility like this, with room left over for lots of shared green space to relax, to play, to grow, and to meet one another. In many places we could even see shared energy systems like micro-CHP, heat pumps or solar thermal panels providing lower monthly bills as well as income to keep up the maintenance on the shared areas.

Tenements were once a model of community living. Few of us would want to go back to shared wash-houses in the 21st century, but by sharing the green space and perhaps the energy which can be generated locally, tenements could help to rebuild the community relationships which were once central to tenement life and could be again.