Glasgow's Italian Centres: narrative, identity, regeneration

This essay is the first interdisciplinary account of literary and non-fictional responses to the Italian Centre – a mixed-use development in Glasgow City Centre - since its inception and completion in the 1980s and 1990s. The essay argues that this early and important example of Glasgow City Council’s regeneration of the Merchant City district became a contested terrain for historic and emerging ideas about civic and national identity, cosmopolitanism and social inclusion. By examining a range of little-studied narratives – novels, architectural reviews, city marketing, interviews with the architect, visual narratives and autobiographies - I consider how these narratives promote or critique the ‘culture-led regeneration’ that the Centre embodied.