Breaking news: the Cumbernauld Centre is set to be around for another 10-15 years yet!

I once got lost in the Centre, looking for the exit to the bus station. I asked two men, who laughed and said 'hen, we've lived here for thirty years and we can't find our way around'😂.

I remember the Cumbernauld centre being built in 1965. I think it opened a couple of years later. As a young lad, growing up in the space-race era, it seemed like a vision of the future. Roads going underneath it and porthole windows, it was like a set from a Gerry Anderson animation.

Cumbernauld was so futuristic when I was a little kid. I was allowed to stay with relatives as a special little holiday, and found it exciting. Their 'lounge' was a lot like the one near the start of the video, with the modernist furniture etc. I saw the 1st UK airing of Star Trek in it. I loved that centre and remember it thriving. There was a record shop. There was a giant clock in the foyer, as shown in the film Gregory's Girl, at the end of the 70s. Looking back, it might all seem like a film set for A Clockwork Orange, but I was too young to understand what a future dystopia was. It was all beautiful to me. I also remember parklands, on the edge of town, with a mini zoo, more of a shed really, filled with ferrets, weasels, and a tiny stoat, launching at me like a bullet, with murder in its eyes, and ricocheting off the mesh

I’m from Cumbernauld, it’s so strange hearing an outsider’s perspective on KZfaq. The last line “a haunting monument to a future that never came” gave me fucking chills. When the Cumbernauld development corporation were running the town it had limitless potential and optimism was high, when the CDC was dissolved and incorporated into North Lanarkshire Council, not only Cumbernauld but every town new and old within the newly created council areas became run down and neglected. Public funds were diverted from commerce and industry, stopped from being reinvested in the town and essentially became the victims of mass corruption. Councillors fill their own pockets while the town crumbles around us. Which leads to a loss of hope/optimism, increased levels of poverty, drug use and violent crime, which leads to the place being vandalised and destroyed by its own inhabitants while still being neglected by the local authorities. There’s a list of people a mile long that should be in jail for what they’ve done to this town over the years.

Ive visited Cumbernauld a lot in the past decade as the company I work for had offices in the now demolished Fleming House right next to the Centre. If you get over the dated architecture it’s a lovely place! People were really friendly and welcoming and the whole place is walkable which was lovely on my lunch breaks. The people of Cumbernauld deserve better than this rotting relic. If a downsized, accessible and less car centric town centre can be built then I’m all for it!

A "liminal space" lover's dream. I could spend days around there with the camera. Great video too by the way.

I used to work with one of the architects who had been an architect working for the Development Corporation for Cumbernauld. I'm sure he told me that the key design 'concept' was that of an Italian Hill Village for the 20th Century. It's a pity they didn't seem to know that the climate of central Scotland at 500 feet above sea level is a bit different to that of Tuscany...........

8:23 Thanks for a wee trip down memory lane..grew up there, and as a kid it was brilliant..the Brutalist architecture was over shadowed by the endless fields quarrys and river meadows which were😮 utopia for a kid.....moved to Ireland in the 80s but have a strange nostagia for the old place.. great families, neighbours .....pity the city planners and investor's let it turn to dust great wee vlog..excellent footage cheers 🍻

Now if they painted the walls yellow, darkened one or two of the corridors, it could be taken as a real life ‘Back Rooms’ - perhaps it could be a money-spinner ! Excellent quality of video production, keep up the good work

My wife is from Glenrothes, another Scottish New Town. Their equivalent is the Kingdom Centre (also, like many retail centres, is struggling I think) but it's nowhere near as avant garde as Cumbernauld's. My wife's family have the original brochure given out by the town planners when they were trying to attract residents from Edinburgh and Glasgow tenements, must have seemed like paradise at the time. I like Glenrothes and would like to visit Cumbernauld. As someone who lives in an historic English town and constantly reminded about 'heritage,' New Towns are a complete contrast and rather refreshing.

Great video, but no mention of Gregory's Girl! Watch the 80s film to get a good look at the place if you aren't local.

2:47 - “Cars would never encounter pedestrians, and pedestrians would never encounter cars.” I still managed to get knocked down! I grew up in Cumbernauld. I remember the Center as bustling and full of shops… Gateway became Asda, it had the Red Balloon crèche which I was JUST too old to go in. There was the Tryst Swimming Pool. What Everyone Wants. Beatties. I remember also the huge clock they had. Certainly felt like an experience to go there. Haven’t been there in ages, but the video sure brings back a lot of memories. A lot of the walkways and odd corridors were sometimes weirdly alien to explore as a kid. Loved to have seen what the penthouses looked like on the inside...

About 25 years ago I spent a day at the centre. It as the most depressing, oppressive place I’ve ever been in. I can see aesthetic value in some brutalist structures, walked around this place for hours and found nothing, no single square meter of any value to humanity. Thank you for the making the video though 😊

Good video. I grew up in Cumbernauld and this structure was "The Toonie"- no one called it "The Centre, Cumbernauld" (invented by a marketing company no doubt). In the 60s and 70s there were lots of rat-runs for youngsters like us to escape authority and get up to mischief. The consortium closed off some of these rat-runs which is a shame as it was half the charm of the place.

Loved going there for a day out with my much loved, beautiful Gran. If I was a good boy, she would take me to Wimpy for my lunch, where we were treated like royalty, with food to match. Great times, never forgotten. Love you Gran. RIP ❤

I worked and lived in Cumbernauld during the late 90's and it was a strange kind of place. I agree the surrounding countryside and even some of the residential spaces were lovely but the centre I never really understood. It reminded me of another 'new town' built after the war and that was Basildon. A lifeless soulless place that didn't have the benefit of the unique countryside on its door step as a redeeming feature. These kind of places become magnets for all sorts of destructive malevolent influences and they are not in short supply around some parts of Scotland as they were in south Essex. It was always a strange experience travelling to work through the beautiful green countryside pockmarked by battle grey housing estates which seemed bleak and marauding. But as someone mentions below it did feature in Gregory's Girl and that did to a degree showcase the positive side of things and the lovely countryside to boot.

"The site was left to the town council to run" The words that spell doom for any project.

Love seeing small channels like yours get a boost from A GOOD VIDEO! Well done you!

Reminds me of Crystal City in Virginia. At one time, could walk underground from one end to the other, with shopping, movie theater, offices, banks, doctors offices, and other services. Everything in one place. On week days it was bustling. Now, dated and comparatively dead.

I’ve worked in for about 15 years and still need a satnav to find streets , and when you think you’ve found it it takes an age to actually find the house you’re actually looking for

Lived in Cumbernauld since 1975 until i was 30 best years of my life where Cumbernauld house is was our makeshift golf course , football field anything really

This has just 600 views? No way. This is high production quality! Incredible good work. Please keep it up. You'll get there!

I worked in Cumbernauld about a decade ago. The town itself was ok - it got talked down a lot by people who never went there but enjoyed sneering at it. But the town centre was horrific, even before all the shops closed. It was a maze of brutal concrete tunnels that didn't quite line up either physically or stylistically. I always felt that i was playing a post apocalyptical video game like Doom or Duke Nukem when I was walking round it. It was awful. It's staggering that it won awards.

The maze like interior of the old town centre is what made it so much fun. I grew up there in the 70s. Some of the accessable areas are truly bizzare, like a kid has gone crazy building in Minecraft They should run tours of the old town center, taking you into all the derilict areas, I would love that.

The network of well planted, off-road paths made Cumbernauld a boon for flashers as well as random attacks by youths on guys walking home from the pub at night. True.

"ye gaun up the toonie" 😊 I grew up there, at the age of 7 I could skateboard (a new rhing back then) from the entrance to the town centre at the Seafar end, all the way down, without stopping to the bottom of MacGregor road and through the underpass going towards Our Ladies High, it was an awesome place to grow up in despite it's ugliness, concrete and white and grey roughcast housing. 🎶"Sunday, Monday, Happy Days"!, the soundtrack to "Grease", the theme from "Jaws" (when you went to the swimming baths), and long hot summers.

The most effective design for a wind tunnel ever made.

I grew up in Cumbernauld in the 00s and this was a wonderful time capsule to stumble across! I have very happy memories in the shopping centre, and I love how strange and eerie it seems now. I'm so used to it being known as the ugliest town in Scotland - thank you for the very fair and interesting video!

Cumbernauld is a pretty decent place. The houses tend to be very well designed. It has the odd rough area like any other town, but its generally an okay place to live. I remember the town centre in the 80's when it was still thriving with loads of great shops. Its mostly dominated by discount and charity shops these days. Much of the shopping is focused around satellite retail parks these days.

I'm one of the few who have lived in the town since birth now 57 years! I strongly believe we should keep the town centre and it should be repaired with all those horrible 70's extensions removed revealing the original mega structure. Love or Hate the design its different. With retail having changed so much there is now not a need for as you mention in the video Boots, McD's and the same shoe shop as every other town in the UK. We have something that is different and special. We wont be around for long but the Town Centre should be to celebrate the New Town Concept and how special and great a place Cumbernauld is to live.

This has the same vibe as Runcorn shopping city. I'm sure that was part of the new town scheme too back in the day.

As an Aussie. Wow at your use of the term Maccas I knew exactly what you meant. Now I want a mcmuffin though.

How HARD does a ‘careless driver’ have to hit a huge hotel for it to have to be DEMOLISHED?

A great video. I love the Brutalist style architecture, but I fear it’s days are numbered. Especially when the U.K. shopping is changing so much, especially post covid. The car must have been moving to cause the Golden Eagle hotel to be demolished.

Great narration of a really good text. In the 70s my grandparents told me to keep well away from Cumbernauld; already dangerous and falling apart.

Really interesting!! I'm going to add this to my list of places to see. Thanks for this video

I've always been fascinated by places like Cumberauld, you have a new subscriber 🙂

Thanks for this concise and informative piece of social history. I live in a (70s/80s era) New Town in England, so I was comparing and contrasting. Look forward to more videos.

There was People Still living in the pent houses in the 80s. My Mum's hairdresser lived there. They were pretty nice actually!

I stayed in the hotel in 1980 and it was beyond belief. No natural fabrics or materials anywhere - plastic, nylon, neoprene, etc. I was a walking, talking, electrostatic monster. Tried to find a restaurant but was unsuccessful so I had to eat in the hotel. Disaster. I asked for a steak with salad and got a small piece of chewable meat with a couple of lettuce leaves and half a tomato. I remember driving up to the place late afternoon and I thought the Centre was a huge industrial complex. The whole place was dismal and had no character. I stayed one night and have never been back.

When you see pictures of the Glasgow tenements from the sixties, you might notice that they are invariably taken from behind the tenements, often in the bin area. This was all part of the message, since few buildings look their best from behind. I was born in the Gorbals myself, and my mother insisted that the house we lived in was far and away the best house she ever lived in.

Kenny Dalglish spent a couple of seasons at Cumbernauld. I've got an old Celtic booklet with Kenny in flares picking up his new Vauxhall Cavalier! Luxury 🤣👍

2:04 _"But the kind of ugly that was very fashionable ... in the 1950s"._ Best description I've ever heard. Spot on! 😂

Growing up in Livingston, also a 'new town', it's amazing how many pictures of Cumbernauld the streets of my youth. We also had a Centre and underpasses, although our Centre got renovated in 90s, resulting in it being almost impossible to get from one side of Livingston to the other after 7pm (when the doors of the Centre closed) as you had to walk around the entire structure to get across the valley.

Just watched this. What a brilliant looking place! The potential for this to become THE shopping centre to visit in the UK is fantastic!! Do it up, get good stores in there, advertise it's obvious quirkiness, love it!! ......'gift horse in the mouth', if only the local council can see it! Love it!!

As a resident of the Highlands and my son in Glasgow this has earned a subscribe and just been added to the list of places to go and see when I visit him. What a great and well presented video, thank you.

I did an art project on Cumbernauld for GCSE art back in the day. Years later, I moved up to Scotland and met my now wife, who is from Glenrothes. I had to genuinely convince her that an ‘indoor town centre’ is weird. Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Livingston…..what is it with 1960s Scottish town planners mashing a bunch of buildings together to make a ‘megatron’ town centre?

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.

I grew up in cumbernauld in the 60/70s and loved it, but since left many years ago and still have many family members there. But it fell into disrepair and north Lanarkshire council never helped much. The underpass system, There was a report in the daily mail in the 80s saying that it attracted flashers😂 and Billy Connolly said that people from cumbernauld didn't know how to cross a road when they left the town😂 Craig Ferguson of American tv fame spent a few of his early years in darroch way, seafar, he called it a desert with Windows.

Extremely interesting and very well produced. Thank you for making this. I live on the other side of Scotland so I know this place only by reputation, but there are similar (if smaller) dreary centres near me, such as the Nethergate Centre in Dundee.

I love the reasonable way you tell all that.

Reminds me of any number of maze-like, 90%-closed shopping centres in Osaka, I love 'em all!

This is giving me flashbacks to my childhood in a concrete laden new town with underpasses you wouldn’t want to visit and houses with tiny windows

I visited Cumbernauld a few months back and was disappointed to see St Enoch's clock from Gregory's Girl was inaccessible to the public!

Thanks for the laughs guys! Btw, all the people who say they'd love to visit my town i can give you the grand tour if you like. For a small fee i could show you where Alan Rough, Scotland goalkeeper stayed. I can also point out where the best takeaways are and which of the corner shops sells the cheapest buckfast. If you'd like to avoid the centre that'll be extra!

What a great video. Would love to see more of these from around Scotland!

All together now...."What's it called? Cumbernauld!" 🙂

Cumbernauld's walking routes are to me a prime example of 'great idea, terrible execution' with idealised rather than humanistic thought underlying them. Whilst there are footpaths between nearby residential areas and the supermarkets and Centre, they're all very indirect and now are in varying states of disrepair - plus they don't always feel safe during the day, let alone after dark. Walking directly to the ASDA from my partner's place in a straight line would take maybe 5 minutes, but as several main roads cut through, to walk there safely you need to take a winding, badly lit and poorly maintained path for 15-20 minutes. Consequently, folks often drive to the centre even if it's nearby or you see them walking on the roads dodging cars, as there are few pavements to allow pedestrians space because it was assumed they'd all take the long way rather than doing what people always do, take the shortcut. The poor management of the town centre is really evident with the Antonine centre. Whilst the original Centre looks dated after being around since the 60s, the Antonine is only 17 years old but looks really worn down in multiple parts too. The ceilings have several leaks and it's normal to have to skirt around a collection of buckets set out in the main thoroughfare catching water. It's a real shame because, as you and others have mentioned, if the town had been properly invested in and maintained it'd be incredibly pleasant to stay in. If you lik the great outdoors it's brilliant owing to the close proximity of the Campsies and the sprawling fileds and woodlands by the river.

Absolutely excellent video! I really don't understand why underpasses were such a popular design thing at one point in time? I guess it's easier to see in hindsight how underpasses are now often the 'No-Go' parts of, at least towns in the UK. But I can't imagine any point in time where an isolated tunnel that people HAD to walk through could be seen as a smart thing to install.

Great video! I remember watching (or perhaps reading) something on the story of The Cumbernauld Centre a few years back and was fascinated by it, the potential to have everything under one roof and not be exposed to the outside elements (hopefully without leaks of course) is perhaps still a little futuristic, thinking of those "Archology" developments in Sim City 2000. It is a shame that it's the mess that it is, the harsh reality of lack of funding is squarely to blame in my opinion as it has turned it into nothing more than a struggling run-of-the-mill shopping centre and in the eyes of many, a particularly ugly one as of course whatever design trend is in fashion when something is built it won't be the style 30+ years down the line. I think there is still potential there, it just needs the funding to repair it and in turn bring back retailers and customers and thus turn it back into the busting hub of the community again.

I grew up in Cumbernauld. My parents were vetted to live here, i used to love the town centre,hard to believe now, used to be a busy place to go. I came back to live here after 12 years away in a other new town of East KILBRIDE and was shocked to see how bad it was. Cumbernauld centre is a result of total miss-management which tried to stop development in other places in Cumbernauld. The town centre needs demolished and needs redeveloped. North lanarkshire has been taking money out of cumbernauld for years to redevelop other areas its time time it spent money here!

Interesting blog and well worth the watch. 👍

Cumbernauld, it's centre (and also, thankfully, the surrounding area) was my first proper introduction to and experience of Scotland...it left a lasting impression, not just because of the architecture.

Cool video, deserving of loads more subs

I was based in cumbernauld for a while and drove all over scotland...but the place I always got lost was cumbernauld

V interesting. Keep em coming.

I live in another of the Scottish New Towns, East Kilbride. It also has a plan for a Town Centre redevelopment. During the Pandemic many outlets closed never to re-open and sadly it seems there is no future for the shopping centre in its current form. Broadly I support re-development with environmentally friendly materials and renewable energy installed.

This is just up the road from me, I've visited a few times and it looks like they've actually fixed some of the leaks in the glass by the library since the last time I was there, or maybe it was just dry when these clips were filmed. Those walkways are lethal when they get a bit damp, that and they reek of piss which isn't very nice. The layout of the place is very confusing, but I still think it'd be a shame to demolish it and replace with some bland glass box, it should be left standing like the Barbican and maintained or even improved where possible, some layout changes inside, a bit of cleaning and new tiles instead of the ancient looking brown ones towards the bus stops would make the place feel much fresher.

I am a planner, trained at the end of the 70s and it was notorious then. Never been but have visited Runcorns Shopping City. Reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. I see there is a fan of Skem in the comments. Don’t think l have heard of a fan of Peterlee

The greater Cumbernauld accent was the central Glasgow accent and most didn’t have the choice in the move initially . The majority of in a community consultation chose no pubs. The centre was the location of my first job of my youth. Home to a large group of refugees welcomed from chile fleeing their facist regime.

If I'm working in Cumbernauld I'll always go for a walk around the centre, such an interesting building. The ongoing maintenance costs are likely interesting also, nothing lasts forever and perhaps a change would benefit the town as a whole.

Stayed 10 minutes away from it for 20 plus years. People used to live in parts of it when first built. Had actual apartments in a part of it. I also remember the big clock they relocated that used to be in front of the old Asda.

From what's shown here - I like it!

I did a geography projet on this on the 1980s which was still touted as a miracle of urban planning!

Thanks for this well-made video.

Visited a relative who moved there in the 1960s. Fantastic place. Space age city, no roads to cross. Everything clean shiny and new.

And yet Livingstone just 40 minutes away, transformed it's dilapidated centre, demolishing the old buildings like the awful bus station and reinventing the centre as a huge retail space and sprawling shopping park.

Your description put me in mind of the Palace of Knossos on Crete, as sort of human ant's nest where every need (including government) was catered for. It also was a 3-D maze of walkways, which one gradually got to know whilst growing up and were impenetrable to the stranger. I hope they find a use for the building, or rather a plethora of uses. Surely the council was a bit remiss in giving planning permission for that ugly retail shed which the private investor built? That seemed a bit foolish with unused space right next door.

I love it!!

I think the saddest thing about still living here is the absolute frustration of dealing with the Centre Management. People want it to stay, but improve it, and instead they seem hell bent on intentional negligence and improper management so they can throw up their hands and say it’s unsalvageable and to demolish it. The recent fiasco with the roof coming off in the winter storms, with absolutely no communication to any of the businesses paying rent in the property, the refusal to do any of the required maintenance to the place, not to mention the little turn a few housing development companies got when the neighbouring HMRC office was set for demolition and having the land up for grabs is really showing that having completely removed management is killing the Centre slowly but surely. It could have been great, but they want to turn it into unaffordable new build housing instead, with no supporting infrastructure like schools and doctors surgeries, both of which are at absolute capacity in the town as is.

Cumbernauld actually works very well, and that is the reason why it is hated, not by the residents but by the chatterati. The paths run as directly as possible, it is the roads that are circuitous, and every house has a parking space. The underpasses thing is just a symptom of the same lack of effective policing that blights all but the well off suburbs these days. The problem is that the pedestrian accident rate in Cumbernauld is something like a third of the average and the current anti car rhetoric is that this can't be done so they hate Cumbernauld for showing that it can. The shopping centre thing is just the same issue found all over, the failure to understand that there is a natural size for any particular town centre and building a new set of shops only empties the existing ones. Cumbernauld has now done this three times.

Cumbernauld was great to grow up in in the 80s and 90s, I grew up in Ravenseood but by the year 2000 I took the first opportunity to move and get away and personally you couldn't pay me enough to move back

Och, there's nothing wrong with the Town Centre. I love it! It just needs a wee lick o' paint!

“Jobs were plentiful” Um…no. Lived in Cumbernauld all my life. My parents were among thousands who moved out of Glasgow for a better life. And generally it’s given us that. But one of my dad’s frequent complaints was that the biggest failure of planning was providing everything folk needed BUT jobs. Most folk were forced to commute back into Glasgow for work.

Hello from Skelmersdale! Great video. I would love to visit Cumbernauld. I have visited Livingstone and that seems to be doing really well for itself. One of the original new towns in the North West of England. Your video tells a similar story to that of Skem as it's known to locals. Built on the edge of Liverpool, it was designed to take people from the slums and give them nice, spacious housing with lots of green space. Our town centre is a building known locally as "Conny" or officially, the Concourse and everywhere in the town is no more than a 30 minute walk to it, and thanks to the use of bridges and tunnels, there's no need to cross roads. Sadly, since Skelmersdale Development Corporation went bust, the walkways and signage has fallen into disrepair so it's not uncommon to find people just walking in the road instead. As for the Conny, it too is mostly empty as the company which own it charges high rent for the area and despite offering free parking, has had it's controversies for ticketing people who visit twice in one day. The rest of the town is beautiful to me, lots of greenery between the estates. Each estate has its own unique style of housing. The roads are great, loads of roundabouts and two motorway junctions. We don't have traffic lights anywhere in the town, apart from one traffic light-controlled crossing which is barely used. Sadly we don't have a train station as when the new town was proposed, they tore up the track and replaced it with a road which is apptly, or ironically, called Railway Road. The currentl council seem determined to turn Skem into every other town by offering developers the option to build on the green spaces between the estates in exchange for not having to include any affordable housing. New build housing here is 3 times the price and only ⅔ the size of the 60s housing stock. It's a real shame as I love New Towns and it was the New Town feel that drew me to move here in 2015. My house was £81,000 and is a large 3 bed terrace with utility room, downstairs loo, driveway parking to the rear, and a south facing garden. In fact, every original estate was designed to have a south, or west facing garden to have as much natural light as possible. At the time, a more traditional town, such as Leyland, where I'm from, I would have been looking at £130,000 for a 2 bed terrace with no parking so yeah, moving here was a no brainer.

Very interesting video, I was there in 1999 and went to these locations for "Gregorys Girl" this shopping centre and Abronhill school. The clock donated from St Enochs station Glasgow was still there though covered in pigeon droppings. The centre might have seemed new and exciting by some at time it was built but has not aged well and was badly designed.

Interesting, informative video, A showcase for history gone wrong. They meant well,but eventually it ran out of steam 😢

Today the roof, when it hasn't been blown off, leaks like a sieve! Bucket sales are a booming industry.

I remember the TV ads in the 80s promoting Cumbernauld when I was working in Glasgow.

Cumbernauld was mentioned in the 1963 report "Traffic in Towns", often called "the Buchanan Report". Prof Colin Buchanan was very complimentary about Cumbernauld and its separation of traffic from pedestrians and cyclists.

I definitely believe it's an ugly centre, but oddly I still love it. I haven't been there for a few years, so, since I'm on annual leave, I may just take a drive through tomorrow.

Visited the centre a couple of times in the 80s/90s, and accidentally detoured there since... the most depressing place I've ever been. And now they want to knock it down?? I'll fight them to the bitter end!! Great megastructure!

I moved to Cumbernauld in 2007 and lived there for 5 years. It still see it as my 2nd home - I have a lot of good and some bad memories while living there, but overall it wasn't bad. You missed to show St. Enoch Clock, but granted, it's hidden in the Centre.

Interesting film, i used to go up to the shopping centre in Cumbernauld for messages (shopping) every 10 or 20 months for a change. Once in a blue moon. It was fairly easy to get there and back from Stepps main street. I liked the shopping centre as it was different, odd, no BS gimmick retail outlets, 1 after another. This was during the early 1990s. I had no idea it was ‘done up’ in 2007. I had a girlfriend from Burundi who was travelling up to Cumbernauld - i was just staring in confused disbelief. Why do you want to go there.? The tax office is there.! I had no idea there was a tax office either. I had know there was an original village, and was told it was a overspill town like East Kilbride. I was always a wee bit fascinated with Cumbernauld with its out-of-the-way location, quietness and its locale, a bit similar with Coatbridge/ Airdrie. I can’t comment on the rebuild of the town centred complex. I have no alternatives. I would maintain it, but private or local government owned, it is bound to bomb. Fifty years functional use of the place seems very poor, and not dissimilar to the Sighthill flats or Red Road flats. High flats as residential is another abscess to avoid touching, a computer is only as fast as its slowest component. I was very recently in Cumbernauld getting lost 2 or 3 times recently, for to follow it with a 4th. This was down more to young people’s stupidity rather than Cumbernauld town. I went to get a car battery last winter in Bishopbriggs Halfords where they told me they were out of them, but that “Cumbernauld branch was showing they had four”. They merely said this verbally, a young person, they did not write down the address, number and postcode. I got lost several times, got dicky instructions and directions from locals, and ended up in that Tesco looking for a bottle of water and a coffee. I think the supermarket inside the Cumbernauld centre was ASDA but that was a long while ago. From memory, it was nameplate engraving/ key cutting shops, wee gift card and trinket shops. I liked the place, but i do not have look at it or go there. I strongly doubt Lanarkshire council will build a replace for the complex to put it mildly. In Glasgow they built an ASDA abouts the old Robroyston hospital around 2000, it was not 24 hours for a few years yet when opening, maybe 2002 or 2003. Between that and the M8 bypass motorway to the South, you want to see the size of the new ‘big box’ structure built for Harper Collins publishing. It is built for Keith R Murdoch of the media enterprise. I legitimately thought Boeing were building jumbo jets in there, the structure sticks up past the overgrown evergreen trees. In a digital era, physical book publishing is given much faster building facility than the centre of a town (mentioned) where thousands of jobs and shoppers have an ongoing locus & concern. Had no idea about the Cumbernauld penthouses. If one looks up the meaning of the word ‘penthouse’, those are very not penthouses. - fine videofilm, well made.

It must have been nice to live in an era when the government (local or central) had the vision to see, support, perhaps even fund things like this being built. Now we’re lucky if we get a pothole repaired. When it comes to new towns, it was a brilliant idea, but I think the only 2 that worked out long-term were Milton Keynes and Welwyn. For this place, it’s a shame they didn’t just build a barbican or something, that’s a stunning piece of architecture that could easily meet the goals that ‘the centre’ was supposed to meet. Enjoyed the video 👍

Made an excellent set for Gregory's Girl, it looked clean and modern..... and what's it called? Cumbernauld!!

A chunk of the roof blew off recently. Closing a bunch of the centre for almost a month. Says it all really. It is a shame though as it really is an interesting place. Walking round it you can see the intensions.

Tidy wee video. Thanks and reluctant thanks to our algorithm overlords.

it requires a big town (significant number of residents) to keep such a centre afloat, not just low-middle dormitory village half of which shops somewhere near their workplace in big city. It must be extremely dense high-rise area if customers supposed to walk-in or centre must have big carpark, good roads and so on if they arrive from large area. Here in Australia we have similar malls, mostly car-oriented even in inner Sydney (Birkenhead point, Warringa mall, Broadway shopping and so on plus many smaller malls scattered on suburbs like our local Marrickville Metro, Roselands or Hollywood in Adelaide) and they prospere, bloom, expand and constantly develop instead of close and abandon. Some of them (Birkenhead or Marrickville) are even much more crooked in architecture as they are rebuilt from old industrial and warehouse buildings stitched together in one structure but it does not matter. The other option is malls in similar dormitory fringe suburbs without any dense residential around - Macarthur, Narellan, Shellharbour and so on, usually as "town centre" with everything under one roof from council hall and library to supermarkets and cinema. This centre tried to combine pedestrian access with low density of population. Fail. It does not work, no one will walk for 20 minutes there and back with bags, kids and dogs if they can get to similar place in 10 mins by car.