Seminar on Scottish Land Reform – A Property Rights Approach to Urban Regeneration?

Speaker: Prof. David Adams, Ian Mactaggart Chair of Property and Urban Studies, The University of Glasgow

All are welcome.

Abstract

This seminar will explore current debates around urban land reform in Scotland and especially its potential to overcome ownership constraints to urban redevelopment. It will explore four particular recommendations recently made by the Scottish Government’s Land Reform Review Group, drawing on international land policy experience, including some lessons from Hong Kong. These recommendations involve the introduction of statutory rights of pre-emption, majority land assembly, urban partnership zones and especially compulsory sale orders. The latter, which would challenge the rights of property owners to keep land vacant or derelict indefinitely, have gained considerable political support and seem likely to be enacted shortly.

About the speaker

David Adams holds the Ian Mactaggart Chair of Property and Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow, having previously worked at the Universities of Reading, Manchester and Aberdeen. His research interests are in state-market relations in land and property, with particular focus on planning and land policy, real estate developers, speculative housebuilders, brownfield redevelopment, and place quality. He has published widely in these fields, most notably as co-author of Greenfields, Brownfields and Housing Development (2002), co-editor of Planning, Public Policy and Property Markets (2005) and Urban Design in the Real Estate Development (2011) and co-author of Shaping Places: Urban Planning, Design and Development (2013).fields. Her research interests include real estate finance and project finance, leasing theory, financial institutions, and public finance.