Located right in the heart of Glasgow, some 300 yards from George Square and Queen Street Station, on the edge of the Merchant City, the Department of Environmental Planning is uniquely placed to take advantage of the City of Glasgow and the region based on the Clyde Valley and Central Scotland as a laboratory of regional and environmental planning and of urban regeneration and economic development activity.

Glasgow's planning history incorporates the planned estates of the 19th Century, the garden suburbs of the 1920s, the slum clearances, new towns and comprehensive development areas of the 1960s, and latterly the regeneration efforts spearheaded by Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal, the Garden Festival [1988], the City of Culture [1990] and the successful bid to be City of Architecture and Design in 1999. There are also policies which attempt to address issues of sustainable development, relating particularly to energy conservation issues.

There are on the doorsteps extremes of rich and poor, physical and social problems, planning successes and disasters, superb conservation and depressing dereliction, outstanding natural landscapes and scarred industrial areas, all of which provide excellent first hand learning materials.

The Department prides itself on close links with those working in the environmental planning and urban development fields. These include the City of Glasgow, the adjacent authorities in Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, Argyll and Dunbartonshire, the Clyde Valley Structure Plan Joint Authority team and many other local authorities within Scotland and the UK. Their staff contribute extensively to the Department's teaching programmes particularly where projects focus on local planning issues. There are strong links too with other development and environmental protection bodies such as the Glasgow Development Agency and other Local Enterprise Companies, and the Scottish Office and the Department's sphere of interest in planning and development extends throughout Scotland to the other major cities, the Highlands and Islands, to the Scottish Natural Heritage [SNH] to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency [SEPA] and to environmental protection groups such as Friends of the Earth [Scotland].

Unlike England, Scotland has maintained both a strong system of regional and structure planning and a tradition of positive intervention in the built environment throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Aspects of housing, public transport, derelict land reclamation. cultural and landscape planning have all been well-developed as aspects of urban regeneration and there is an active debate about sustainable urban development and the values of the compact city.

The Department, located within the Business School, is also able to call upon the skills of lecturers and professors of law, economics, local authority management, tourism and European policy, while it also has links with architecture, politics and geography, and the graduate school of environmental studies. So it has a strong interdisciplinary ethos while maintaining the intimacy and focus of a dedicated and specialist environmental planning department.

Not only is Glasgow a great place to study environmental planning and issues related to urban and economic development, but the city itself is an exciting and attractive place to live. The city has a superb Victorian core and a wonderful legacy of 19th century planned estates and parklands. Matching this urban land-scape is a vibrant urban culture that includes the headquarters of the Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra AND the best in clubs, rock, folk and jazz music.

There is a full range of cinema, drama, museums and art galleries including the famous Burrell Collection, the largest civic owned reference library in Europe [the Mitchell], and a very wide range of pubs, clubs and cafes that open late.

Shopping is excellent and includes a diverse range of specialist stores and there are a wide range of sporting facilities and events for participants and spectators [especially football fans].

Within an hour, by bus, train or car, are the coast, islands, lochs and mountains of Scotland which offer superb touring, cycling, walking, climbing and sailing all year round.

Furthermore the people of Glasgow are renowned for their friendliness, openness and sense of humour.
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As a potential professional within environmental planning / urban development, students will certainly be exposed to the forthright opinions of the community, of the business people and of the environmentalists on the City, the suburbs, the estates, the Scottish countryside and their reactions to notions for future developments.

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