I would love to know how this new Purpose-Built Student Accommodation block on New City Road in Glasgow managed to get planning permission as it sticks out like a sore thumb and blots out views across the historic buildings of the West End of the city from the equally historic Speirs Wharf.
Any sort of Viewshed Analysis would have shown it would have an undue impact on view of building, such as the towers of the A-Listed former Trinity College (the tallest of which you can just see poking over the top of the new building) and that of the former Park Church as well as the surrounding Park District.
Glasgow's historic buildings, and the views of them, are one of the city's greatest and most unique assets, but the council planning department seems to continually ignore the need to protect them. The issue here is that if we lose them through poor planning decisions, they are often gone forever and we cannot get them back. As such, I would like to see a much more cautious approach to urban planning in Glasgow.
This is not to say that new buildings should not be built or developed, just that there needs to be a stricter set of rules to ensure they do not have a negative impact of their surroundings, and the city as a whole. If developers are not willing to stick by such rules, so be it, and we should not let the profit at the cost on the city as a whole. In my book a bad development is not better than no development.
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