Devon Street Urban Park: Outlining the Future of A Forgotten Space
To find out more about a proposed new urban park below the M74, we went along to the design launch and spoke to local residents about the ambitious transformation which could happen on their doorstep.
By James McAleer | Photo from Erz Landscape Architects, 2024
Triangulated by Devon Street, the A77, and Pollokshaws Road, overshadowed by the long and low M74 flyover, the proposed site of the Devon Street Urban Park will be a familiar sight to many Southsiders.
From the window of a bus (it is along Devon Street where the buses, heading townward, swing west past retirement housing to join the A77) on a clinically crisp Autumn day, the future park is hidden behind overgrowth, scrub grass, bramble, willowherb. Disembark, and a gap lets you see through to a broad expanse of grit, dim in the shadow of the overpass and wholly empty. In its present state, it’s hard to call it anything in particular: a site; a space; a place which seems, quietly, to have been forgotten.
Plans for the reinvention of this area were publicly launched on 3 October at Tramway. First devised almost a decade ago, the Devon Street Urban Park – spearheaded by artist-skaters Toby Paterson and Raydale Dower, in collaboration with ramp-builder John Bailey – would, in their words, “transform an unused area of land … to create a new public, free to use, urban sculpture park and active leisure space”.
The aim is to improve connectivity between the surrounding neighbourhoods of the Gorbals, Eglinton Toll, Govanhill, and Pollokshields; in doing so, to claim a place within the wider cultural landscape of the city. It would bring multi-million pound investment to the Southside: £1.2 million of which has already been offered by the Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation – a US foundation which also supported the design process of the park from 2023-4.
At the launch event, in an elegant first floor room of Tramway, it felt like an exhibition; a private view. Prints hung suspended from the ceiling and grouped on the walls. One, by artist Beth Shapeero, was all abstract movement in soft hues, curled and straightened black strokes against a taupe backdrop. In a photograph, artist-skater Leah Moodie seemed to hover in midair.
On the opposite wall, the design proposals were printed and enlarged. One illustrated Devon Street’s enviable position, a 20 minutes walk from Central Station and Argyle Street, Queen’s Park and Shields Road; the dotted lines which traced these paths lending to the site a sense of magnetism. Concept sketches showed ramps and benches, skaters and passersby, a low slung pavilion to house a café and WC facilities, a vanishing commodity in public parks. A copse of trees - a “planted mound” – had been placed, thoughtfully, in the path of the sun.
The sketches set skating and urban sports at the core of the park, but noticeably also emphasised community: an open space for markets and fairs, integrated seating within the trees, and public art at the southernmost entrance. The diverse aspects of the park seemed on an equal footing, one space flowing into the next, a sense of motion and life like that in Shapeero’s prints, the photograph of Moody.
“Are you the architect?” I looked up from the whitewashed scale model of the park (in which, to be honest, I was pretending to walk around). The twinkle in my questioner’s eye suggested he wasn’t quite serious. He was something of an anomaly in the room, a grey-haired retiree among chattering professionals. Yet, as a resident of the retirement housing on Devon Street, his stake in the park, and in the future of the site, was real.
He was emphatic in his enthusiasm for the project: “I can’t wait. They need funding? Get it.” Speaking about its current state he described the unused land as a ‘dump’. He spoke of break-ins, garden theft, and drug use in the scrub grass. He spoke of a hopeful future, in which residents can have a coffee and take a walk outside their door. Just now, he said, the closest usable green space was Queen’s Park. The twenty minute walk, for many residents he said, was a challenge, especially in the colder months.
By now we had sat down and were deep in conversation. His friend joined – Michael. Another Glasgow native, he had seen much of the city and its changes, and his enthusiasm was more tempered: plans for planters for the residents had gone up in smoke. More importantly, who would take care of the park? Where would the money come from for its upkeep?
Devon Street Urban Park Design Presentation Event: 29 October, 6-8pm
His worries, as they emerged, were familiar: crime, vandalism, noise and disruption, and the prospect of clear sightlines and well placed lighting did not fully ease them. Clearly there was work to be done for the developers: not just attracting investment and drawing visitors from across the city, but also working with those closest to home. It was heartening, then, to hear that consultations had taken place with residents, with more planned in the coming months.
There’s form for this sort of project in Glasgow, tempered with a measure of caution. The Kingston DIY Skatepark, founded in 2020, provided a sheltered place for skaters to practise and socialise under the massive Southside stanchions of the Kingston Bridge, which bears the M8 over the Clyde. The skaters, mostly young people, built their own ramps, organised litter picks, and worked with locals to set up a small community garden.
Nevertheless in June this year, a closure notice was issued, citing vandalism, fire starting, drug use, and graffiti as key and insurmountable issues. Amey Consulting – contracted by Transport Scotland to maintain the local roads – acknowledged that the skaters were not to blame, without shifting their stance. At the time of writing, a petition is still circulating as the skaters try to save their park.
Reading this story, I thought back to Michael’s concerns, and the outsized impact caused by the behaviour of a few; too, I thought of those who had worked so hard to create their park, to be undercut and turfed out into the unforgiving Glasgow weather.
The hope is that this new park can pave a way for a more sustainable future for the DIY skate community Glasgow. Fitting, then, that the design proposes to use reclaimed granite from the city’s surplus stock.
My new friends left for the bus, not before inviting me to the next community consultation. Before I left I glanced again out of the semicircular window: a signwriter; their cans of paint; behind the high boards, something being built, and down the road, Devon Street, out of sight from here.