Cumbernauld, Town for Tomorrow - High Quality - 1970

What warms my heart here are the good intentions. It's easy to compare 'then' and 'now', but back then there was optimism for a better future for families without the luxury of hindsight which we now use to criticise.....

Lots of people saying its a dump. The old town centre building is aye, and SOME areas are not filled with the nicest people but I have mostly lived in Cumbernauld since I was 4 after moving from a Shithole in Glasgow and I love it. Apart from maybe Carbrain you are usually a 5 minute walk to a forrest on the outskirts. Even at that the place is filled with trees. There are really some nice areas in places like Greenfaulds, Kildrum, Condorrat. Thats without even talking about half the town on the other side of the M80 which is fairly new and nice. It does have its down sides such as the Town centre and the fact that its not easy to get about by foot. However its not as bad as some people from here are making out. I think people that don't live here see the Town centre and think the whole place is a shithole. Knock the Town centre down and build a pedestrian high street filled with pubs, resturaunts and shops and it would be night and day.

Growing up in Cumbernauld i fondly remember what the town center once was so sad to see it's decline. Still I live here & still i belong to Cumbernauld

I moved to Cumbernauld with my parents and baby sister in 1962. In these days people were "vetted" before being given a house and the breadwinner had to have a decent job. I remember 2 women coming to check our suitability for a new house. In these early days. Cumbernauld was a eutopia after the slums of Glasgow and I loved my childhood and teen years there. It's sad to see how it is now. My elderly mum is still there but I escaped in the late 70s as did my sister.

I grew up in Ravenswood. we had moved from Glasgow and we loved it. I had a great childhood there. always friends to play with, great sense of community in Skye Court. was very safe for children. happy memories.we left in the late 70s.

The New Towns of tomorrow will be built by Amazon and they'll make todays Cumbernauld look like a paradise.

When I was growing up in Cumbernauld with my family I loved the place, so many memories come flooding back. The Town Centre was a brilliant adventure park for bairns, probably pissed off the adults but och well :) Sadly it has fallen into neglect, stayed in Kildrum for many years, drove through a couple of years back, what a shock, Kildrum Primary burned down and replaced with new housing, the flats where I visited school friends knocked down. The usual generic shopping experience of every other town has taken over the Town Centre, Tesco, Asda superstores etc. On a positive note, the parade with the cast of the Magic Roundabout, remember it like it was yesterday.

Its a sad state of affairs seeing what the town used to be like, I was born in 95 so the towns "golden era" was well over by the time I was experiencing the town centre. Its scary though watching this video and seeing what the town is now, they may aswell be separate places

I remember going there as a child, I was told to dress smart as it was an important impressive place worthy of looking smart. I remember the Cooke brown tiles up the ramp and smell of the bakers, it was like entering an airport or something very futuristic, I had been told by my teacher that its palace to respect and that it was really important and that on Monday I should write a narrative about my visit. It really did seem like a town of the future.

I once spent a week in Cumbernauld one evening.

moved to Cumbernauld in 1974 what a blast from the past

Sure that's me (Bobby) in the Library at 5:55, and my younger brother Ian at 6:11. We're dressed the same, look about 2 years apart. I'm the one at the back-right, blonde hair, shirt, tie and grey waistcoat, fidgeting, and looking away :)

"Son." "Da wit is it?" "We're moving tae Cumbernauld." "NAW!"

That restaurant on the top floor of the town center looks magic and sophist. I want to go there. Lol. 

@SlightyDisturbedNBK The designers provide a canvas for living, they do not create the kinds of people that live there. That is what irritates me about the stick these kinds of places get. They essentially put poor people who were already in over crowded conditions into these flats and new towns and then gradual neglect and disbanding of the powers that be (Cumbernauld Development Corporation) meant it all went to hell. Sad.

The married woman's comments about isolation have been said a lot by my mother. She is 50 years in Nauld on May 1st.  Felt quite emotional seeing the hill in Balloch View . Our house is at the bottom. Nice seeing St Mary's Primary too. It all seemed so young and dynamic. The trouble was the folk of Nauld didn't choose the "tomorrow" they received. Seeing the old medical centre..I can still remember that blue decor.  I can still smell thew tobacco smoke in the bank. Lol

Great documentary! Enjoyed that.

Hill-top location...aye, tell me about it....bloody coldest place in Scotland!!

Really enjoyed, thanks for uploading

Interesting film. Idealistic to say the least. The trouble with these types of places is that they were built to solve the immediate needs of the original occupants - those people from the slums. To them this was probably a massive step up. So the first ten or so years all is probably good. Its the generations that follow is where rot begins. No sense of community. Cheap housing, lots of people in the same boat. It was a real life social experiment that went wrong. Just like Runcorn, Kirkby, Skem etc.