Fire, violence and poverty are correlated

Events over the weekend do not paint a particularly healthy picture for Glasgow. It is almost impossible to draw direct lines of causation between individual occurrences and the social circumstances from which they emerge, but it lets us off the hook if we pretend they are not directly related. We should not require legalistic proof of causality before we raise concerns about consistent phenomenon indicating social malaise.

Another major fire risks Glasgow feeling almost under siege, the landscape of the city many are familiar with under assault as recognisable buildings symbolising the period of Glasgow's peak are lost to the city through demolition and (far too often) through fire.

The fire on Union Street has completely engulfed and destroyed Common Weal's old office (101 Union Street)s. It was a fine Victorian building which appeared to form the facade of Glasgow Central Station. While dawn has not long broken over city, at this stage it seems unlikely much will survive, more of Glasgow lost to destruction.

That it comes shortly after scenes of violence at an Old Firm football match the scale of which we see rarely now only increases the sense of things not being well. Glasgow has somewhat sighed in relief in recent years that while violence surrounding football matches has not disappeared, it does not have the ever-present nature it once did.

But is it possible to pick individual events like these and derive something wider from them, a deeper meaning? The tendency in a lot of social science is to prevaricate on this, particularly as the conclusions that are drawn pose deep ideological challenges.

There is no question that there is a strong and consistent correlation between indicators of low social wellbeing (poverty, inequality, addiction rates) and social harms (crime rates, public disorder, environmental degradation). But as statisticians constantly insist, correlation is not causation. One does not 'cause' the other. We can only say they exist in the same place at the same time at rates which are consistently higher.

We know that there is a direct correlation between fire and poverty, not just in rates of fire outbreaks but in lethality of fires. But we also know there is a direct correlation between fire and dereliction, and that Glasgow is the Scottish city with by far the highest rates of dereliction.

We also know that there are very big differences in the rates of public violence over time and in different places and we know that there is a very strong connection to poverty and inequality. When societies and communities are under financial duress it leads to more social unrest and therefore violence.

Glasgow is consistently one of the very worst cities in Britain for poverty and especially child poverty. Much is made of Glasgow's peripheral estates but actually the Union Street fire is right in the centre of Glasgow yet took place in one of the poorest constituencies in the country where about 45 per cent of children grow up in poverty.

There are plenty of other indicators that Glasgow is not well. Those from higher social classes note the deteriorating public environment in the city centre, everyone notices the struggling retail centre with landmark shopping malls filled with charity shops, and the lower social classes in particular face unprecedented levels of medication for depression, anxiety and psychosis.

One in five people in Glasgow are currently on medication for mental health and one in three has been at some point. These are only some of a set of persistent indicators that frankly have changed far too little since the days of the post-war slums.

The solution to this has, since Glasgow's 'renaissance' in the City of Culture era in the late 1980s, been retail and tourism. Glasgow has gone through a hard shift from being a manufacturing powerhouse to being a shopping centre. This has been sold as a new era for the city but it looks depressingly like the old era but with worse jobs.

And it is hard to feel that this is really the focus on policy any more. If Glasgow is interested in being a tourist destination then it wouldn't be allowing only of the jewels of its tourism offer to be sitting largely destroyed and untouched – Glasgow School of Art being another victim of Glasgow's plague of fires.

Care must be taken; correlation isn't causation. But there is too much about Glasgow just now that suggests all is not well to see events such as we saw yesterday as unconnected to the wider malaise of the city. Frankly the great economic transformation of Glasgow over the last 40 years has not worked. It's problems remain persistent. It is hard to see how more of the same will help.

It is time that we broke from the rigidity of Scotland's economic orthodoxy and to stop taking a hands-off approach to social problems. Without a change in approach, the best bet would be further decline for Scotland's largest city.