Scotland has no controlling intellect

Why does it feel like things in Scotland aren’t designed to work? It’s because they’re not designed to work by a person who cares, they’re designed to make profit by a bunch of people who don’t.

As citizens, the closest we get to 'seeing ourselves as others see us' is probably going on holiday for a couple of weeks and coming back. I was in Greece and watched a small island port that didn't even have a terminal building turn around four giant car passenger ferries in well under an hour with no-one breaking sweat. It didn't appear to be that tricky.

The Herald's deputy business editor was in Japan and now appears to find the dirt and mess of a Scottish city centre a real shock. I understand him well; I came back from Sweden a few years ago and found myself asking why we can't get anything right in Scotland.

Here is one of my crucial explanations; Scotland entirely lacks a controlling intellect. What I mean by that is that, when we do something in Scotland, it is never, ever someone with a clear vision given the ability to deliver a project in its totality, from concept to design to delivery.

This is yet another outcome of Scotland's deep, deep commitment to Thatcherism. I know you all think that Thatcherism didn't take off in Scotland but it did; it was simply imposed by a ruling class without talking about it or asking anyone if they wanted it.

Everything is 'free market', outsourced, fragmented, treated as just a process of juggling contracts. No project is ever run by anyone who cares about the project. In fact in Scotland, caring about the project you are running is one sure way to have that project taken away from you. Only the 'cool, detached head' of someone who has no interest in what you are doing is trusted.

What I mean is that it is always the financial sector and its unholy constellation of 'service companies'. Always. Want to revamp an urban space? Under no circumstances get an architect with a vision to do it. You get a consultancy to write a specification and another to design a Target Operating Model and another to commission artists impressions.

Then you hand the whole thing over to a financial consortium to build it and they then go ahead and build whatever they want. This is always dull and designed to maximise profit.

The outcome never works. It is always rubbish, always disappointing, never exciting or inspiring. There are pitifully few developments in the devolution era that quicken the heart. I remain a fan of the Kelpies and the Falkirk Wheel is startling. But how much more than that? Scotland is just an extension of the unobjectionable, utterly forgettable St James Quarter in Edinburgh.

The defining aesthetic of contemporary Scotland is the soul-destroying blandness of the ever-multiplying student accommodation buildings. You can't even have a decent argument about them being ugly because they're nothing. They don't have the courage to be ugly. If there is a part of a modern city that is filled with character, Scotland's planners will put that straight.

I remember what Edinburgh's Cowgate was like before the fire, a characterful jumble of old buildings colonised by artists and students and trendy nightclubs. Now you would forget it even when you're looking at it.

Let's look at what 'the opposite of this' looks like. I learned it properly years ago when I read an article about good architecture. This was in an international journal and they used, as their example of impeccable architectural planning, Edinburgh's New Town. The article explain what makes public space feel exciting and interesting but not disorientating – balance.

It argued that a unifying factor in 'good urban spaces' is that you find a strong balance between consistency and predictability and surprise and delight. If you make everything uniform and repetitive you end up in a Soviet-like oppressive housing estate. If you make everything random and of totally different styles it is disorientating and ugly.

When you maintain consistency and then factor in surprise and change, then you want to linger. My idea of 'perfect planning' is to walk along Queen Street Gardens until you reach St Vincent Street where you can look down to St Stephens Kirk. You pass very mild variations of the New Town town house, the slight sweeping asymetrical curves of Herriot Row, with gardens in front and if you explore you find circuses and squares and little green spaces. It is calming yet constantly surprising.

It was the work of one man; James Craig. That is how it manages to be brilliant – one controlling intellect.

“The goal isn’t perfection, it’s the chance – just the chance – for genius that changes all our lives”

What it looks like when you have no controlling intellect is Glasgow's financial district. It is fitting that this is the home of Scottish Enterprise, an ideological heart of Scottish Thatcherism in exactly the kind of ugly, random jumble of buildings which I'm sure individually looked great on paper.

This is a failure of planning – then again, Scotland is basically a failure of planning. Planning officers used to be the great utopians, until they decided there was more money in it for them if they worked for big money rather than for an exciting future. Hence they invented the 'white boxes in a field' model which is really the defining creation of modern Scotland.

But I'm not only talking about building and planning here. You know that moment when you get off one bit of public transport and then you find yourself thinking 'eh, why doesn't it connect with the next bit of public transport?'. To answer that you need to plough through a mountain of contracts for services each to a private company which may or probably may not give a monkeys.

Then look at Lothian Busses. They work, because they're one entity, steered and designed to serve.

When Scotland gets Covid the officials decide that the best way to organise services is aircraft hangers miles and miles from the people who need them. 'I'm off to get my vaccine – only six bus journeys and none of them connect. Hope I don't get infected.' That's Scotland.

Scotland builds ferries (badly) and has ports, but there are about three or four controlling interests in the ferry system and who owns a port in Scotland is a game of 'pick a US private equity firm and you'll not be far away'. So we put out contract to build ferries to serve a certain route then we put out another contract to dig up the port because the boat we just build doesn't fit.

What is most god-awful galling about all of this is that it is done in the name of efficiency. If you have ever had much contact with the people who preside over this system (these are inordinately well paid officials you definitely have never heard of) they are arrogant and patronising in equal degree to being wrong.

I sat in a room with food procurement officials from the Scottish Government a few years ago and I had to explain basic concepts to them like 'smart procurement' or 'procurement-led development'. High-handedly they kept telling me things were illegal under EU rules (it was back in those days). I patiently explain that (a) they weren't illegal and (b) there were examples of it happening all over the EU.

But the power of rational argument has no sway with Scotland's financial establishment. They make their living cannibalising Scotland's public money through this terrible, fragmented system and if it results in exactly the crap outcomes you'd expect then there you go.

So let me return to the start; let people who know ferries run ferries and they work just fine. Let people with vision lead and what you will get may be challenging but not valueless and not bland. Sure we got the 'Victorian monstrosity' from Victorian civic planning and the 'concrete jungle' of some of the post-war brutalism. But the influences these developments had goes miles beyond any one building.

Victorian municipalism created town squares and libraries and community halls. Scotland's New Towns revolutionised the idea that children ought to be able to walk to school again, that towns should be organised round people's needs. Some of the post-war architecture is rather alienating but it housed amazing developments in civic amenity and space. The goal isn't perfection, it's the chance – just the chance – for genius that changes all our lives.

I would take no end of glorious, interesting and exciting failure over the dull, bland, life-sucking failure that is modern Scotland. The finance sector-driven fragmentation of public life has ripped the heart out of public service in Scotland and the result is a random country where nothing works and no-one has designed anything for any reason other than their own personal gain.

As for the dirty, messy state of Scotland's city centres? Perhaps the Herald's deputy business editor might want to dwell on the mess of outsourced contracts responsible before the next time the Herald runs a puff piece from Scotland's 'business services sector'.