In June 2005 a week of intense work by locals and roaming anti-G8 activists saw a flytip at Eglinton Toll transformed into a welcoming haven. Paving slabs became flowerbeds, broken bottles a mosaic and uneven ground wheelchair-accessible. On the day that the first work ended, it was announced that development was to be halted until the end of a court challenge to the motorway. 30 years of deliberate neglect by Glasgow City Council were turned around by local people glimpsing for a moment what their part of the city could be.

Unfortunately, this victory turned out to be illusory. Over that year of respite many campaigners shifted their attention from building local, community-based opposition to issues around the legal challenge. For whatever reason, others campaigners within the JAM74 group felt disempowered and unable to contribute. Others outside but alongside JAM74 were burnt out by the intensity of the initial push to take the land. Amid other pressures around the G8 summit and its aftermath, further development of the garden didn't receive the attention it maybe should've. (I count myself among this last group and any perceived criticism should be read as aimed principally at my actions.)

After an initial (and predictable) spate of vandalism over the first winter, more work was done in 2006 and the garden restored to a pleasant state. In a hot summer, it was used a lot by local people. Dog walkers would rest on a seat built into a tree. The local Somali community would decamp en masse from their nearby office to spend afternoons there. People who'd first encountered the space as a discreet place to drink came back during the day with replacements for plants scorched by an amazing summer. (In Glasgow nobody anticipates the need for regular watering.)

This is how I want to remember the garden. Lying on grass on a hot summer evening after critical mass. Watching the sun set slowly over the trees, forgetting that less than 50 feet away is a road where traffic would wake me up after midnight. Picnicking with friends old and new, tired and happy thinking "we made this, this space is ours".

And now its gone. A muddy soon-to-be building site where all that will grow is a 100-foot concrete stilt for a motorway that only businessmen and politicians want. It'll tower over the residents of sheltered housing in Devon Street, it'll appear from the panoramic views of the "luxury" flats growing like fungus at Eglinton Toll, it'll cast a long shadow over those walking or cycling the short way to town and throw a cloud of soot over any claims of Glasgow's "civic leaders" to care about the health or environment of their most vulnerable residents.

Shame on us all.

Is it possible that the approaching concrete could resurrect the demoralised campaign against the road? After this expensive act of vandalism, there's work going on at West Street Underground station car park. There's no-one can stop it but us...