Every visitor to Glasgow must take a tour round the city chambers. Almost 130 years after its completion it remains one of the finest examples of Victorian civic architecture in the UK and you’re advised to allot a couple of hours to your visit if you want to appreciate its splendour. It was opened by the old queen herself in 1888 and has lost none of its beauty since. It sits in George Square in the heart of the city and not long after you embark on your tour you will think that you have been here before.

The city chambers has been cast as a handsome and silent star in dozens of Hollywood movies and UK drama productions where it conveys a time, place and an atmosphere in an instant. Last month, its presence in the BBC adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent enhanced the visual appeal of the series. The sweep of its artistic range possesses both the temporal and the spiritual. It performed a similar job in An Englishman Abroad where it represented the Kremlin and in Heavenly Pursuits where it became the Vatican.

The city chambers also has more Carrara marble than the Vatican. This fact was relayed last week by Baillie Liz Cameron, one of Glasgow’s best-known councillors, to a group of Fulbright scholars as she led them through the halls of her workplace. Ms Cameron, a bit of a city gem herself, also informed the Americans that she had written to the pope to tell him that Glasgow trumped his palace for Michelangelo’s favourite marble and that she had extended him an invitation to see it for himself the next time he’s in the city.

The city chambers is also bound to feature in an eagerly awaited book about Glasgow by the journalist and author Alan Taylor that is soon to be published by Birlinn. The title of Taylor’s book is Glasgow: The Autobiography and will feature the thoughts of hundreds of people who have lived in Glasgow or encountered it. It will include the observances of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson as well as those of a somewhat more edgy cast of lesser-known characters.

Taylor, who relayed to me the story of the outstanding papal invitation, is one of those rare beasts: an Edinburgh man born and bred who doesn’t get a nose bleed whenever he bides long in Glasgow. “I couldn’t have written this book about Edinburgh,” he said. “Much as though I love Edinburgh, it simply doesn’t have anything like the drama and human dynamism of Glasgow. This is a city that lives and talks at 100 miles per hour.”

A street performer pays the price for requesting help from the audience at the Edinburgh fringe. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Taylor will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book festival next weekend to talk about his work with Richard Holloway in a session that is already sold out. There will be much to discuss, not least the ageless rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the fact that while Edinburgh has been the subject of dozens of studies, there are no serious academic histories of Glasgow. Also sure to feature in the discussion is the revelation last week that the population of Edinburgh may be about to outstrip that of Glasgow by 2037 at the present rate of growth. According to the National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh’s population will rise by more than 28% over 25 years, more than three times the rate for Scotland as a whole, to 618,978 in 2037. Meanwhile, Glasgow’s will fall, thus suggesting that it is in danger of losing its status as Scotland’s largest city.

The figures don’t actually take into account the fact that Glasgow’s real population is more than 1.2m. This, though, was artificially reduced by massive relocation in the 1960s and 1970s to ease overcrowding within the city and successive boundary changes in the 1990s that were unkind to Glasgow. Thus, boutique local authorities such as East Renfrewshire were created that denuded Glasgow of revenue and territory. More than 2 million Scots of working age live within a one-hour commute of Glasgow and the city generates £18bn in gross value added to the Scottish economy each year. Glasgow could function perfectly adequately by itself, but Scotland couldn’t function without Glasgow. It is and will remain for a long time to come the nation’s biggest and most important city.

Yet it is grossly undervalued and underappreciated by the rest of the country. Every year since the SNP came to power in Scotland in 2007, Glasgow’s block grant from Holyrood has been cut. And though Glasgow was one of only four out of 32 local authority areas to vote for Scottish independence in 2014, it remains curiously and grossly underrepresented in Nicola Sturgeon’s Holyrood cabinet. The tiny, self-serving and utterly unrepresentative political and media elite that has mushroomed in the environs of Holyrood continues to revile and criminalise Glasgow with its discriminatory Offensive Behaviour at Football Act and the eye-watering numbers of stop and searches carried out on its young citizens by an out-of-control police authority.

The huge gap between affluent and poor that exists within a seven-mile stretch of Glasgow has become something that these people mock. This is before they fob the city off with vapid promises of reducing inequality and increasing attainment. My city has suffered grievously from population manipulation and the failed social experiments of scientists, academics and politicians. Yet Scotland, while skimming off Glasgow’s output and its capacity for hard, hard work has done little to alleviate the pain of its poor.

In Edinburgh meanwhile, where this discussion of an important book about Glasgow will occur, the international festival is taking place. The Scottish government pours millions each year into Edinburgh in an attempt to make it a 365-day-a-year festival city. For four weeks in August, it swells grotesquely with television executives, publishers and authors prattling about the future while plotting more ways to make money. Edinburgh has become a global theme park for frivolous self-gratification, a staging post in the global elite’s gap year. As its town planners continue to drive a wrecking ball through its glorious and ancient cityscape they have also permitted it to become a city of froth and artifice: a 24-hour party city.