One by one the lights are going out on the most historic street in Glasgow. The High Street slopes down through the city in an arc from north to south, taking in the medieval grandeur of Glasgow Cathedral and some of the best preserved examples of Victorian red sandstone tenements in the UK.

The oldest pub in Glasgow is there too (though not for much longer) and behind it a phalanx of old paving stones, thought to be the remnants of the oldest built thoroughfare in Scotland. Other European cities revere their ancient places and build around them, making them centres of attraction. You can find doorways that open on to the city’s turbulent history and the memories of the people who once lived there, and who live there still.

Not Glasgow though. It has chosen to desecrate its oldest street and much of the neighbourhood it once nourished. The vibrant businesses and shops which occupied the ground floors of these mighty tenements have undergone a harrowing. Sharp and sudden increases in rents followed the outsourcing of its management to a commercial property firm through the agency of an arm’s length external organisation (Aleo), basically a local authority handwashing device. A scattering of “To Let” signs, like blackened teeth, now disfigures this old quarter.

Disappearing Glasgow: documenting the demolition of a city's troubled past Read more

Amid the resentment caused by this urban dismantling there is a growing suspicion that the High Street and its environs are being deliberately denuded of its people and its history to make way for something unlovely and intrusive. The task of turning off the oxygen has already begun. In recent years bus routes in and around the city centre have been recalibrated to avoid going down the High Street.

Massive student apartment blocks built to a uniformly bland design have begun to appear. In May Glasgow’s councillors will decide the fate of the Old College Bar, a tavern whose foundations date back to 1515. Inexplicably, the building which houses this place has not been listed. The plans to demolish it are distressing enough but the chrome and glass excrescence that is being proposed in its place defies belief.

The development, if it goes ahead, will be a 12-storey block of student apartments with a few shops which will tower over the entire neighbourhood. If you were to erect a giant permanent portable building adjacent to Westminster Cathedral, the disfigurement of the built heritage couldn’t be more startling.

The developers, Structured House Group, might disagree. They see it as a “beacon of regeneration” which will reproduce the interior of the Old College Bar. Good luck with that one.

Structured House Group has developed several student blocks across Glasgow. Visitors are always advised to look up when walking through the city centre to observe its lofty architectural delights. These include some of the finest preserved Georgian townhouses and stone ornaments in the UK. The proliferation of these gilded student dormitories among them has become the urban equivalent of an invasion of giant hogweed.

These gilded student dormitories are the urban equivalent of an invasion of giant hogweed

More than 11% of Glasgow’s population – around 70,000 people – are students. The University of Glasgow and Strathclyde University have come to rely on affluent overseas students for income. The student blocks are designed with them in mind and their stiff rents reflect this. In these places you’ll find all the leisure facilities of a Cunard liner.

The High Street has become an extension of the nearby Strathclyde University which has begun to resemble a small, independent state sprawling out over the north side of the city. Gordon Matheson, former leader of the city council, resigned two years ago and was appointed visiting professor with the Institute for Future Cities, part of the economics department of, ahem … Strathclyde University. Part of a wide-ranging portfolio of duties in this post includes “working with commercial organisations as well as local and national government”.

As well as the cathedral and the Old College Bar there is the 17th-century Tolbooth Steeple. Admirers of these places might want to start taking photographs of them now as future reminders of how they once looked.