city, so that new, planned communities could be built on the cleared ground. In total, 20 Comprehensive Development Areas were designated in Glasgow, with one of them comprising a large part of Anderston. Although Anderston's housing problems were no worse than many other areas of Glasgow, Anderston was made an area for priority treatment as the need to improve Glasgow's road network had led to the plans for building a motorway through the city. The route of this motorway was to go through Anderston Cross, the traditional heart of the community, and the plan for the comprehensive development of the area was approved in 1961. The new Anderston would therefore be divided into three zones; a Commercial Zone devoted to office space and commerce on the eastern fringe of the city centre, and bordered on the west by the new ring road, a Residential Zone consisting of new housing estates to the immediate east and an Industrial Zone to the south east. The work on the road network and the demolition of housing progressed throughout the 1960s. By the following decade, the new Anderston bore little resemblance to the old area. The high density housing and streets full of tenements had been swept away, and most of the residents had been rehoused in places such as Knightswood, Easterhouse, Cumbernauld, Drumchapel and East Kilbride. In 1951, the population had stood at 31,902; by 1971, it had dropped to 9,265 as a result of redevelopment. There were two major fires in Anderston in the 1960s. The first occurred in March 1960 on Cheapside Street when a whisky bond caught fire and exploded. The explosion occurred over an hour after the initial fire and caused part of the building to collapse on top of three fire engines and trapped firemen beneath rubble. Fourteen firemen and five salvage corps workers were killed. The second fire occurred in November 1968 in a factory on James Watt Street. The fire trapped twenty-two workers who could not get through the windows which were barred. Many of the tenement blocks in the area were demolished in the 1970s to make way for the M8 motorway and Kingston Bridge and Anderston Cross was replaced by the Anderston Centre. The idea was not a success, and by the 1980s the centre's many covered underpasses and service roads had become a notorious red light district, with prostitution a major activity in