Ferret Underground: Who Owns Urban Scotland?

Hi ,

Our series 'Who Owns Urban Scotland' is out this week!

We've already published seven stories from it, looking at the owners of our high streets, cultural venues, infrastructure and vacant buildings.

Thanks for all your positive feedback so far, and for sharing our articles far and wide.

Tomorrow, we will round off the series with a look at potential solutions to the problematic ownership model, and how our struggling cities and towns could be rejuvenated.

Remember if you want to join The Ferret as a full member, you'll get your first three months free if you use the code WHOOWNSURBANSCOTLAND at checkout here.

Local authorities own over 1,100 vacant properties in Scotland’s cities while real estate investors, tax haven firms and others are responsible for more than 500 high street vacancies, The Ferret can reveal.

According to figures from the Scottish Assessors Association (SAA), nearly one in five vacant properties in Glasgow are owned by the council, which has almost a third of its owned properties lying empty. This was triple the proportion of that in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, where at least one in 10 council properties were unoccupied.

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