IT is fast becoming every young executive's dream - owning his or her luxury apartment, sitting on the veranda with a gin and tonic and looking out over stunning riverside views.

Twenty years ago the Clyde was lined with cranes and resounded to the constant hum of heavy industry.

It would not have been the river of choice for aspiring homeowners.

Now developments of flats are springing up right along the river.

As old industrial Clydeside has largely disappeared, so its place has been taken by thousands of stylish new apartments.

They are being built at an astonishing rate - and selling at equally astonishing prices.

Glasgow, which lagged behind Edinburgh's soaring house prices in the early 1990s is now catching up with a vengeance.

And the new apartments are routinely being snapped up for between £200,000 and £300,000.

Leading the way in what is truly a housing revolution in the city is a three-mile long development known as Glasgow Harbour - a relatively new addition to the city's vocabulary.

In the Clyde's shipbuilding heyday, there never was a Glasgow Harbour.

But planners used the name for the massive new development on former shipyard land between the SECC and the Clyde Tunnel.

It is the biggest project in the regeneration of the Clyde. The estimated cost for the first two phases is £1.28billion, it promises 2500 homes and 20,000 jobs over the next 10 years.

The four million cobblestones used to create the riverside footpath were reclaimed from the old Meadowside Granary in Partick.

Workers were trained in the ancient art of stone paving specifically to clean and re-lay the 150-year-old cobbles.

Developer Clydeport is planning to have a public square the same size as the city's Blythswood Square.

The new Museum of Transport will become part of the development, built on the site of a former shipyard where the River Kelvin flows into the Clyde.

There will be a top class hotel, a casino, a new footbridge across the Kelvin, a walkway along the Clyde, shopping centre, cinema and leisure complex.

A new road system is being put in place to connect the development with Partick and Yorkhill and attractions such as the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery.

The aim is for Glasgow Harbour to effectively become a new district of Glasgow with its own population and own distinct identity.

But those developing the area are ensuring links with the past are not forgotten.

The new square will be called Sawmill Square - a reflection of the industry that went on around Partick.

The blocks of flats have replaced what some regarded as a Clyde eyesore - the huge Meadowside Granaries which stood on the north bank for nearly a century.

At the mouth of the Kelvin the former A&J Inglis shipyard has an iconic place in Clydeside history as the place where the famous paddle steamer Waverley was launched.

The yard's name lives on in the housing development Waverley Gardens on the site of the former engine works.

Yorkhill Quay is being filled in and will house the futuristic Museum of Transport. The tall ship Glenlee will be berthed there, as will the Waverley itself.

There is still much fondness for the area's shipbuilding past.

But the future is Glasgow Harbour and to those regenerating the Clyde it is one of the flagship developments.

Euan Jamieson, managing director of Clydeport, has no doubts people will buy up the apartments as quickly as they are built.

"We will continue building houses here for the next 10 years to meet the demand," he said.

"This development is ideally placed. Partick is the sixth busiest railway station in Scotland. We will have retail and leisure facilities along the Kelvin, pontoons, river buses, that sort of thing."

He has a very clear vision of what he sees as a modern self-sufficient riverside community with easy access to the older areas and attractions nearby.

A large part of Glasgow Harbour has already been built - a lot more work remains to be done, but those behind it hope it will become a classic piece of 21st century regeneration. Changing face of the riverside PAST: The rundown buildings of Meadowside Granary PRESENT: The luxury apartments of Glasgow Harbour FUTURE: the futuristic transport museum planned for the banks of the Clyde Sit-in wrote chapter in history

No story of the Clyde would be complete without mention of the workers' controlled sit-in staged in 1971 in the yards of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders.

UCS was a consortium of five yards - John Brown in Clydebank, Charles Connell in Whiteinch, Yarrow at Scotstoun, Alexander Stephen at Linthouse and Fairfields of Govan.

Ted Heath's Tory government had announced it would no longer prop up "lame duck" industries and the Clyde yards would have to go.

On July 30, 1971, Jimmy Reid the charismatic Communist shop steward, told a mass meeting in the Clydebank yard they were going to have a sit-in and work-in - not a strike - a first in trade union history.

He added: "We are not strikers. We are responsible people and will conduct ourselves with dignity and discipline. There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism and there will be no bevying."

Reid's famous oratory made him a hero to the men and the public.

A year later - and after the police said they could not guarantee order in the city if any of the yards closed - the government injected £35million.

The U-turn was only a short-term victory for the men but was enough to write themselves a chapter in Clydeside history.