Introductory essay by Michael Pacione
Narrative diary of Alessandro Varacca
Conversation with Alan Taylor

‘A Guide to Glasgow’ tells the story of the largest city in Scotland, once famous as Great Britain’s industrial and maritime workhorse, then notorious for decades of unemployment and social issues, and recently striving to consolidate a new leading position in the educational and financial industry. It is a book mixing narrative sections to pictures of the city taken between mid-2017 and late 2018, a collection of urban landscapes portraying more than a century worth of economic booming, development, turmoils, regenerations, and resilience through Glasgow’s contemporary urban fabric and character. This bizarre biography of a British city seen through the eyes of an Italian photographer also features a valuable introduction from Strathclyde University prof. Michael Pacione, and a friendly conversation between the author and local journalist Alan Taylor, who got catapulted into the 1980s Glasgow as his career was about to take off. ‘A Guide to Glasgow’ walks the reader through more than a hundred years of urban development, investigating and portraying the remains of the glorious industrial Glasgow during the Victorian era, the invasive regenerations of the mid-1950s, the housing crisis and, more recently, the shift towards an economy based on services. As the socio-economic fabric shifted from labour-intensive realities to capital-based industries, so did the city’s appearance. Overcrowded black-smoked tenements were bulldozed to make place for pragmatic high-rise flats and other modern housing forms, while a substantial share of Glaswegians was relocated to new peripheral districts. As the text narrates the unfolding of all the key historical events, the photographs provide visual context by capturing the legacy of the master plans, the regenerations, and the massive relocations that have molded XXI century Glasgow.