The Glasgow Effect

By Ellie Harrison

I will not travel beyond Glasgow’s city limits, or use any vehicles except my bike, for a whole calendar year. – Ellie Harrison, January 2016. This simple proposition to attempt to live a low-carbon lifestyle of the future put forward by an English artist living in post-industrial Glasgow cut to the heart of the unequal world we have created. A world in which some live transient and disconnected existences within a global knowledge economy racking up huge carbon footprints as they chase work around the world, whilst others, trapped in a cycle of poverty caused by deindustrialisation and the lack of local opportunities, cannot even afford the bus fare into town. We’re all equally miserable. Isn’t it time we rethought the way we live our lives? In this, her first book, Ellie Harrison traces her own life’s trajectory to examine the relationship between literal and social mobility; between class and carbon footprint. From the personal to the political, she uses experiences and knowledge gained in Glasgow in 2016 and beyond, together with the ideas of Patrick Geddes who coined the phrase ‘Think Global, Act Local’ in 1915, economist EF Schumacher who made the case for localism in ‘Small is Beautiful’ in 1973, and the Fearless Cities movement of today, to put forward her own vision for ‘the sustainable city of the future’, in which we can all live happy, healthy and creative lives.