THIS brilliant picture, taken in Roystonhill in 1969, shows two very different sides to our city.

While, in the distance, the towers of the Red Road flats point towards a better and brighter future, the wrecked car in the foreground reveals a darker reality.

Roystonhill, formerly known as Garngad, has seen many changes over the years, not least its transformation from open farmland carrying the old Edinburgh road to a tenemented overflow of Glasgow.

Its position, once on the north bank of the Forth and Clyde Canal, now on the north side of the M8, which follows the filled in route of a branch of the old canal, has always kept it cut off from the city proper.

The area's tenements proved a magnet for Irish incomers in the 19th century, when unscrupulous Glasgow landlords were happy to pack more than one family to a flat.

Diseases such as tuberculosis were rife, and the Garngad slums were regarded as some of the worst in Europe.

Redevelopment work began in the 1930s, and stepped up a pace in 1942, when the area was renamed Royston.

Although the area still has its problems today, it also boasts a proud and tight-knit community. Looking at this picture, we wonder how the owner of this Morris Minor managed to explain this calamity to his car insurer.