Urban renewal initiatives tha followed World War II, such as those motivated by the Bruce Report, and the Abercrombie Plan, entailed the demolition of slum tenement areas, the development of new towns, the building of overspill estates on the periphery of the city, and the construction of tower blocks. Several districts of the city were designated ‘Comprehensive Development Areas’ (CDA) with the intention to raze them and rebuild from scratch with entire communities dispersed.

Although the new town option was accepted, with places such as East Kilbride (south of the city) and Cumbernauld (northeast of the city) being established, the need for thousands of new homes was becoming ever more pressing. Almost half of the dwellings in the city had been judged as overcrowded in the 1951 census while in 1957, 97% of housing in the Gorbals was still described as ‘unsatisfactory sanitorially’.

With the Glasgow Corporation keen for as many citizens to remain as taxpayers within their boundaries as possible despite limited space and funds available, the overspill and tower proposals were eagerly pursued. This was in contrast with the trend of lower-density housing which had been preferred prior to the war but were considered to take too long to build and use too much land in comparison with the urgent need to replace so much of the inner city.

The city’s initial multi-storey residential experiments in the 1950s at Crathie Court, Moss Heights and Prospecthill were largely successful (and have survived into the 21st century) but their scale of only 10 floors did not address the availability issue sufficiently, and in the next decade the number of towers commissioned by Glasgow and the height of the structures, including ambitious projects in Dalmarnock, Hutchesontown, Kennishead, Pollokshaws, Red Road, Scotstounhill, Sighthill, Woodside and Wyndford, was also one of the highest across the continent.