Calton's most famous landmark is the Barras street market and the Barrowland Ballroom, one of Glasgow's principal musical venues.

No official definition of Calton's boundaries exist, notionally it can be thought of as the roughly trapezoidal area bounded by the River Clyde to the south, Abercromby Street to the east (where it borders both Camlachie and Bridgeton), and the City Union Line railway to the north and High Street/Saltmarket to the west.

Six of the men killed at the scene were locally called 'martyrs' and some of them were buried in the Calton Cemetery off the main London Road.

Calton is an area of considerable poverty and multiple deprivation regarding; "current income, employment, health, education, skills and training, housing, geographic access and crime.

A BBC Scotland news report on 13 February 2006 pointed out that, partially due to poor diet, crime, alcohol and drug abuse, life expectancy in Calton is lower than in some areas of Iraq or the Gaza Strip.

The Guardian writes that higher risk of dying before they are 65 (up to 30% in comparison with Liverpool and Manchester) occurred because of rehousing skilled workers (cream skimming) due to 1970s policy documents.