TEENAGE mothers are sterilised. Neds on Asbos are named and shamed on the nightly news. Neighbours from hell are evicted, Big Brother-style, by mobile phone vote.

Welcome to Glasgow in 2020. Or at least as some of the city's citizens imagine it. This is Hard Glasgow, one of seven scenarios envisaged by Demos, the think-tank, after spending 18 months speaking to 5000 Glaswegians.

Hard Glasgow isn't all bad. The streets, after all, have never been cleaner. The other six Glasgows envisioned are: the socially divided Two-Speed City; feminine Soft City; eco-friendly Dear Green City; yoga-loving Slow City; socially alienated Lonely City; and ethnically diverse Kaleidescope City.

"None of them are utopias and none of them are dystopias," said Gerry Hassan, who led the Demos project. The report he co-authored was published today. It didn't get a good reception. Even its title, The Dreaming City: Glasgow 2020 and the Power of Mass Imagination, brought snorts of derision from the technocrats in George Square.

"Mass imagination is complete nonsense," said one official. Mr Hassan and his colleagues at Demos, however, believe in the power of crystal balls, and their findings probably say more about Glasgow today than any future.

So what about Hard Glasgow? This isn't the No Mean City of the 1930s. This is a Glasgow where authorities outpunch hardmen.

"The city authorities ran out of patience with their people a long time ago," wrote Mr Hassan and his co-authors. "All efforts to support trust and community have failed. Government intervention extends into citizen's lives as never before, enforcing curfews on entire families, banning smoking in the home, outlawing the use of petrol-driven cars. Children who break rules at schools are interned in boot camps outside the city, known as Ned Camps.

"This is a city which is proud that it practices hard love', tough on failure and tough on the causes of failure'. Bigger and bigger sticks are needed to get people to respond and behave in the way government wants."

Hard Glasgow is a quiet place. "Apart from the constant growl from police helicopters swirling overhead," said Mr Hassan. It might, however, appeal to some more than Two-Speed Glasgow. Another caricature, this time of Glasgow's notorious social divide.

"By 2020 economic and social divisions are so entrenched that Glasgow has become two cities living side by side in blissful ignorance of one another," Mr Hassan wrote. "One half believes that everyone is middle class now' while the other half is bedded down in social housing estates, existing in temporary jobs or on benefits. Both halves believe that they represent the majority experience of living in the city.

"With social mobility at an all time low, people are born in the same side as they die. There are little to no movements between the two cities and the politics of Glasgow are entirely conducted around the values of the richer half. The excluded have by-and-large opted out of voting, politics and notions of citizenship.

"The connected, cash-rich/time-poor part of the city is constantly in a rush. There are special toll roads, air conditioned walkways and luxury water taxis, cocooned from the rest of the city. The other half rely on crowded, dilapidated public transport. They have plenty of time but with little to do spending most of their time hidden away at home."

Soft Glasgow is much nicer, a feminine place where the yin has overcome the yang. Mr Hassan explained: "A city once renowned for masculine attitudes, behaviour and values, runs to a very different heartbeat with public spaces filled with softness, conversations between people and a sense of verve, style and fashion. Women in 2020 form the vanguard of the new cultural epoch, setting the scene working in different, more co-operative ways, but many men enthusiastically sign up too, liberated from the pressures of machismo and competition.

"Football is no longer so important - one sport among many. Glasgow has lost the chip on its shoulder, making up with Edinburgh and reaching peace with the wider world. It has even taken the step of apologising for its role in the British Empire, and brought an elderly but still lively Bill Clinton to the city to chair a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to mend sectarian disputes."

There isn't much room for sectarianism in another imagined city of 2020. That's Kaleidescope Glasgow, where so many newcomers, even the English are welcome, have arrived that Old Firm rivalries are long gone - Partick Thistle is the top team. In Slow Glasgow, football has been replaced altogether. Yoga is the sport of choice. "There is now a sense of pride in taking time doing things, doing jobs well, building products that last, and there is no longer a social stigma attached to therapists - you are weird if you don't have one," at least that is how Mr Hassan and his colleagues sum it up.

The Dear Green City is pretty relaxed too, although expect to have to pedal hard at school or work. "Glasgow's green revolution sees exercise bikes hooked up to generators in schools, offices and homes," Mr Hassan said. Lonely Glasgow is perhaps the harshest vision of 2020, a picture of sad, isolated people sitting at home playing computer games.

This is community planning as Glasgow has never experienced it. Indeed, Demos yesterday said it believed the project was the first of its kind in the UK. Its final report, however, puzzled the kind of technocrats who usually carry out such exercises in public consultation. Some of the language raised sniggers. Glasgow, it said, needs a space for "alchemists and imagineers".

Glasgow City Council, which co-funded the £200,000 project with numerous other private and public bodies, didn't like that. It was even angrier about a press release put out by Demos ahead of today's launch. "Formulaic city regeneration fails to improve quality of life," the think-tank said in a statement clearly aimed at council officials in all Britain's town halls.

Glasgow City Council hit back, although leader Steven Purcell was said to be reluctant to dignify the Demos report with a response. "Bizarre would be a charitable way to describe some of the report's conclusions," said the council. "What on earth is meaningless nonsense such as assemblies of hope', alchemists' or mass imaginings'?"

We need people to take control and volunteer themselves'

Here are some examples:

"City to be graffiti-free, with stronger punishments for the culprits."

Michelle Mone, lingerie entrepreneur

"You hope the people at the council have learned that buildings don't change people. The investment in all the physical stuff looks great, but it's not enough. The city looks good but only in a marketing way." Unknown

"The big chances for changes don't lie with the council but with ourselves. We need to do stuff to live together better, and not just look to the political system to change us." West Ender "It's about a process for getting hope: we need to trust, to trust schools, children, ourselves. We need people in rooms talking. We need to understand ourselves. The community needs to come together to change. We need people to take control and volunteer themselves. We need hope but we know it's hard." Single mother

"Teenage single mothers should be sterilised to prevent them having children again." Single mother

"In 2020 I hope that the deep -fried Mars Bar will never be mentioned in association with Glasgow again!"

Glasgow website