Pioneering the Health of the City: A re-publication to mark Glasgow’s 850th anniversary

This year marks Glasgow’s 850th anniversary and to mark the occasion, we are re-publishing one of GCPH’s first ever publications - Pioneering the Health of the City: A historical town trail through the heart of Glasgow. 

Launched in 2005, this booklet gives a detailed overview of Glasgow’s health history, based on a walking trail through the ‘historic backbone’ of Glasgow. It looks at old and new housing, environmental pollution, clean water and sewage, education, food, access to medical treatments and green space, which have been the foundations for the health and wellbeing of the city’s residents. It shows examples of the challenges that faced the growing community and how people devised innovative and imaginative solutions to these urban problems. 

At the time of publication, this booklet was only available as hard copy, so we have now digitised it to coincide with Glasgow 850.

Glasgow City Council’s Glasgow 850 aims to create a yearlong inclusive, citywide, programme of events and activities that reflect on how the city has transformed, particularly over the last fifty years, and how we can inspire accelerated change for a better, sustainable, future, over the next fifty years. 

This anniversary provides an opportunity to:

• Join with partners to reflect on the city's transformation and growth since 1975 when Glasgow 800 was celebrated 
• Speed up ambitions for the future centred around the Council's grand challenges of tackling poverty and inequality and increasing prosperity and opportunity
• Continue our fight against the climate emergency and improve our sustainability
• Put the River Clyde at the centre of this storytelling. The lifeblood of the city and is the symbol for community wealth building and climate action for the future. 

Throughout 2025, GCPH will contribute to these aims by reflecting on GCPH’s past work and highlighting important learning ‘From the archive’. In addition, we are planning to develop a brand new health history timeline for Glasgow and to create an audio walking tour to accompany the Pioneering the Health of the City booklet. 

Lastly, we will be co-hosting a film screening on the history of housing and health in Glasgow with National Library of Scotland's Moving Image and Sound Archive and Glasgow Media Co-op. 

Look out for updates on our social media channels or sign up to our network.