Some 12 months prior to the redevelopment announcement Red Road residents had their first official indication that there may be some truth to the rumours then circulating that their homes were to be demolished. In a letter from the GHA, residents were called into a consultation process around the topic of the ‘longterm future of MSFs [multi-storey flats]’ [image_1]. While stating that no decision had yet been made to demolish the highrises at Red Road, the letter confirmed that their long-term viability was open to question. Included in this letter was a list of the ‘problems’ known to be associated with ‘MSFs’ generally: high cost of modernisation, low demand, high rents relative to other housing types, high maintenance costs, poor environment, lack of community facilities, ‘too many people in a small place’ (density), lack of suitability for children. To this list of generic problems was to be added a one final, compelling fact, Red Road’s non-traditional construction: ‘[t]hey were built using a steel frame which required the widespread use of asbestos to ensure adequate protection from fire’. Although posing no immediate health risks, the presence of asbestos in the building fabric made attempts to maintain and improve the standards of the flats particularly difficult, posing dangers to contractors and residents alike. For example, all prospective tenants are warned of the danger of asbestos-containing products, and are asked not to puncture wall panels, and some repairs require residents to be decanted. Asbestos will even determine the very method to be used in demolition (piece-by-piece ‘deconstruction’ as opposed to an explosion). As an un-named spokesperson for the GHA concluded: ‘I can’t see a situation where anyone could refurbish these houses’ [1]. The GHA letter is a small but significant inscription within the assemblage of objects that work to translate Red Road into a housing failure. It draws upon a wider range of inscriptions, including academic analyses (of, say, disinvestment, stigmatisation, residualisation), political statements, quantity surveys, each of which to consolidate this fact. As the GHA letter reveals, any attempt to complicate or contest the story of Red Road’s failure is easily short-circuited by recourse to one ‘irrefutable’ fact: the presence of asbestos in the building fabric.

A letter such as this helps produce, by disseminating, the fact of Red Road as a housing failure. In the media conference that announced the redevelopment several other inscriptions as well as the building itself were performatively called together to stabilise and harden that fact. The conference was held in an empty 23rd floor Red Road flat. During the event little was said about the ‘problems’ so clearly listed in the tenant’s letter. Attention was focussed instead on the redevelopment vision. While the GHA officials formally announced the redevelopment plans that day, they also counted on the decaying and tenantless flat to eloquently convey the case for demolition. The announcement was further supplemented by a GHA-commissioned computer animation which showed a sequence in which the Red Road highrises progressively disappear from the Glasgow skyline [image_2]. In this further inscription, the fact of failure has become so stable that even the messy matter of planning, financing, and physically demolishing this massive, asbestos-ridden building could be bypassed by a simple mouse click. The GHA officials, their inscriptions, and the very fabric of the building, conspired to translate Red Road as a housing failure so bringing an ‘end to explanation…cutting off indefinite complexification… tidying things up’ [2] .