Since the announcement six months ago that Glasgow had won its bid to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014, all eyes have been focused on the east end of the city - where the Games will be based and where hopes of the city's regeneration are pinned. And yesterday, that focus sharpened when Kenny Dalglish, Scotland's most famous sporting celebrity and arguably the east end's most famous son, arrived to survey the scene.

The famous striker was the star attraction at the public unveiling of the grand masterplan for the much-anticipated Commonwealth Games Athletes' Village, as envisaged by RMJM, the Scottish architectural practice chosen by Glasgow City Council to deliver the dream for Dalmarnock. An audience of local people, politicians and the media watched as 40 hectares of mostly disused and neglected land - the equivalent of 40 football pitches - was graphically transformed into a gleaming urban utopia of whitewashed houses, gardens, parks and low-rise tenement blocks.

All of which was unrecognisable to Dalglish, Scotland's most-capped footballer, who spent key moments of his life in the area. On the west side of the site is Ardenlea Street, where Dalglish lived for the first year of his life - although his old home at number 76 was long ago demolished to be replaced with the kind of abandoned open spaces that have become characteristic of Dalmarnock. At the east end of the Athletes' Village site is Parkhead, the home of Celtic FC, which Dalglish joined in 1967, becoming its star striker and scoring a record 167 goals before leaving for Liverpool ten years later, and eventually returning to Celtic as director of football in 1999. The new £4m National Indoor Sports Arena (NISA), a National Velodrome and the SportScotland HQ are currently under construction on a derelict site opposite Celtic Park.

A 50m swimming pool is planned for neighbouring Tollcross.

Dalglish, who left Dalmarnock as a toddler and grew up near Ibrox, attending Milton Bank Primary School and gaining a place on the Scotland Under-15 team, is keen to see how the plans are developing. He is currently Head of Scottish Football for McDonald's, working with the Scottish Football Association to fund football coaches and football academies. "Our work in Scotland has surpassed all expectations, which shows there's a need for the kind of work we do."

Asked about the need for proper sporting facilities for young people today, Dalglish says he first kicked a ball in the garden with his Rangers- supporting father.

"Things have changed since my day and children don't have the freedom to play outdoors any more," he says. "They need a safe environment, so I think all the new facilities and green spaces that are being created here means everyone can benefit from the Games."

He agrees with councillor George Redmond and former Sports Minister Frank McAveety, who also grew up in the east end, that this is a "special time for Glasgow".

As he walks down Springfield Road from Celtic Park and the NISA site to survey the riverside space on other side of the road, which will become the Athletes' Village for the three weeks of the Games, Dalglish is ambushed by autograph seekers. The father of four, whose wife, Marina, is a breast cancer survivor, jokes: "When I was a boy, we used to play against the Lady of Fatima school team here, and this was a dangerous place."

Wearing a muted dark navy suit, blue shirt, grey striped tie and his trademark sportsman's tan (Dalglish is also a keen golfer) the 57-year-old looks fit, healthy and only slightly out of place among the burned-out tyres, hoardings and fast-food outlets that dot the landscape. By 2014 these will be replaced by a temporary village to accommodate 8000 athletes and thereafter, once the Games are over, 1200 permanent homes, which will be a mix of four-storey tenement flats, townhouses, riverside apartments and detached homes - all with gardens, lots of community green spaces and even a tree-lined boulevard on the main road. It is hoped these new homes - at least 300 of which will be social housing - will help regenerate the area.

"Our vision is that the village area becomes an east end community when it's all over. We hope it will return Dalmarnock to its family-orientated past, at a scale that already exists in the fragments of tenements at Parkhead Cross," says Paul Stallan, the architect at the helm of the masterplan and European Design Director of RMJM - the only British architect firm to design a 270,000m2 venue for the Beijing Olympics.

"This is a rural setting in an inner city and we see it as a place people will want to live."

The riverside site is south-facing and very lush - and the antithesis to the grim post-industrial landscape surrounding it. Yesterday, there were swans and a cormorant sunning themselves on the water and butterflies flitting about the riverbank. Cyclists and joggers are in abundance. There are no plans to develop the riverside here into a high-rise replica of Glasgow Harbour in the west end. The plans go out to competitive tender in March 2009, and RMJM, among other private developers, will be bidding to build. The scale, height and density of building outlined in the masterplan, says Stallan, have been accepted in the original Glasgow bid, and it's hoped that they won't be changed by 2014.

"This area of Glasgow is a blank canvas, an opportunity to start urban planning from scratch and to avoid the mistakes of the past," says Stallan.

Dalmarnock's post-industrial legacy is one of deprivation. It has been cut off by the River Clyde on its north and east sides, by the railway on its west side and by Parkhead stadium to the north, says Stallan.

But all that will change with the completion of the M74 extension, which will link it with the M8 as part of the city council's ongoing Gateway Project, and will open up a huge area of the city.

"It's interesting to note that Dalmarnock is within the same walking distance of the city centre as Byres Road in the west end, yet it seems further away," says Stallan. "The entire Commonwealth Games project could see the rebalancing of the east and west ends of the city."

Although there is no football at the Games, Dalglish is hopeful. "They have it at the Olympics so you never know what might happen in the future," he says.

No doubt Dalglish, who remains proud of the skills he learned as a local boy, is hoping for a win on his home turf.