Bruce Report

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The Bruce Report (or the Bruce Plan) is the name commonly given to the First Planning Report to the Highways and Planning Committee of the Corporation of the City of Glasgow^[1] published in March 1945. It influenced an intensive programme of regeneration and rebuilding efforts which took place in the city and surroundings from the mid-1950s and lasted until the late 1970s. The author was Robert Bruce, Glasgow Corporation Engineer at the time.

A few years later in 1949 the Scottish Office in Edinburgh issued its rival Clyde Valley Regional Plan 1946 ('CVP'). This was authored by a team led by Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Robert H Matthew^[2] and disagreed with the Bruce Report in a number of important areas. In particular the CVP recommended an overspill policy for Glasgow and the rehousing of much of the population in new towns outside the city. The Bruce Report preferred rebuilding and rehousing within the city boundary. The friction and debate between the supporters and spheres of influence for these two reports led to a series of initiatives designed to transform the city over the following fifty years.^[3][4]

Some of the Bruce Report initiatives were put into practice; others were not. The report and its implementation significantly shaped modern day Glasgow. The most prominent impact of the report is the M8 motorway, and the system of arterial roads within the central area of the city which was built following proposals in the report. Also the mid-20th century policy of resettling much of the city's population through the mass demolition of tenement slums and their replacement with peripheral housing schemes arose from recommendations in the Bruce Report, reflecting Glasgow Corporation's resistance to overspill and new towns until it co-operated in the designation of Cumbernauld new town in 1956.

The civic, economic, political, architectural, geographic and demographic landscape of modern Glasgow would have been radically different without the influence of these two reports. Had the Bruce Report itself been implemented unaltered in its entirety, the city today would probably have been unrecognisable.