Reimagining Glasgow

Urban regeneration is vital for breathing new life into city centres. Thriving cities adapt and evolve through transforming outdated infrastructure and underutilised spaces into vibrant hubs for community activity. Successful regeneration boosts local economies and creates inclusive environments where people want to live, work, and play. With its rich history, growing young population, and strong foundations in education and innovation, Glasgow is positioned to embrace urban regeneration and secure a sustainable future. However, not enough people live in the city centre, which is a challenge that must be addressed.

Over recent months we have held several meetings and events, including a Commercial Real Estate Breakfast Briefing, and have collated the thoughts of those we have engaged around how city centre living in Glasgow can be increased through urban regeneration. There have been many perspectives shared, looking at current challenges, policymaking and opportunities, and the complex planning and legal landscapes. Below we share some thoughts on urban regeneration in Glasgow and how our attendance at MIPIM this week will give us further food for thought.

A city of opportunity

Glasgow’s regeneration journey is well underway, with a strong foundation built over the last 25 years through regeneration projects such as the Gorbals, Merchant City, Glasgow Harbour and Finnieston. More recent redevelopment along the River Clyde’s south bank, highlighted by the Barclays Campus with its modern office spaces, wellbeing facilities, and landscaped riverside areas, exemplifies this progress. Recent infrastructure additions, such as the Partick to Govan pedestrian bridge, enhance connectivity, building on earlier projects such as the ‘squinty’ and ‘squiggly’ bridges. As a hub of academic and creative excellence, with top universities and institutions including the Glasgow School of Art and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow has the potential to attract and retain a vibrant, young city centre population, provided there are ample job opportunities and attractive housing options.

As a city, Glasgow must harness its unique strengths, rather than comparing itself to cities such as Edinburgh or Manchester. Key assets including the International Financial Services District (IFSD), a growing tech sector, retail and hospitality success, and major events such as the 2026 Commonwealth Games, COP26 and Glasgow 850, position the city as a great place to live and work. While the city’s strategic direction highlights ambitions to capitalise on these opportunities, the challenge lies in effectively leveraging them to draw more people to live in the city centre.

Evolving demands in a changing economy

In the post-covid era, demand for commercial real estate has evolved rapidly, with significant changes across various sectors. Glasgow must adapt to these shifts to remain competitive and attractive.

In the office sector, the rise of hybrid working has reduced demand for traditional office space, as fewer public and private sector businesses require employees to be in the office full-time. However, demand for high-quality office space remains strong, with new-build vacancy rates as low as 0.4% in Q3 2024. The development pipeline remains constrained, focused on refurbishments, highlighting the need for more innovative office solutions.

Although the rise of online shopping has reshaped high street retail, major brands including Primark and JD Sports continue to expand their portfolios in Glasgow, demonstrating ongoing demand for quality bricks-and-mortar spaces. The recently refurbished Nike store on Buchanan Street demonstrates that experiential retail is the future, with retail spaces being reimagined to offer more engaging and dynamic experiences. Glasgow needs to continue to evolve to keep its status as one of the UK’s top retail destinations. Projects such as the redevelopment of the St Enoch Centre into a mixed-use development, featuring shops, offices, restaurants, and homes, and the plans to redevelop Buchanan Galleries, highlight the ongoing shift in commercial real estate towards more diverse, multi-use spaces.

The growth of hotels and serviced apartments in Glasgow highlights the city’s appeal to tourists. Notable projects such as the Radisson Hotel & Serviced Apartments, opening in 2027, demonstrate ongoing investment in the city’s accommodation sector.

By contrast, the secondary office market has not witnessed a post-covid renaissance, with hybrid working resulting in greater levels of unoccupied space. The obvious solution is to convert this space to an alternative use where there is demand, such as housing, but this presents a particular challenge in Glasgow, where many large, listed sandstone buildings cannot be readily converted for residential use to meet planning requirements and building regulations in a commercially viable manner.

Residential property in Glasgow has seen significant growth in recent years, albeit from a low base. In 2011, the city centre’s residential population was only 7,000, but by 2024, it had risen to 28,000. Glasgow City Council’s City Centre Living Strategy set the target of increasing the area’s residential population to 40,000 by 2035. Rents in the private sector have reached record levels, with demand vastly outstripping the available supply, and the demographic has shifted, with 81% of residents aged 16-44. Building on this growth will require a collaborative approach by developers, their professional advisors, local authorities, national and UK governments and developers themselves to share knowledge and work together to find solutions. With a focus on diverse residential models such as build-to-rent, co-living, mainstream residential and PBSA, enhancing the city’s urban and social infrastructure is key to supporting this expansion. Improvements to public transport and active travel options are a necessary part of that, not only to further attract city centre working and living and to support existing environmental efforts, but also to improve public transport connectivity with Glasgow Airport.

Navigating the complex planning landscape

Planning remains a crucial element in the success of urban regeneration, but current barriers in policy and practices continue to slow redevelopment. The latest data for 2023/24 shows a decline in local and major development applications, with local applications falling to a five-year low of 22,565, down from 26,585 in 2019/20, and major applications dropping from 307 to 227 during the same period. Decision-making times have also slowed. Despite these delays, the approval rate remains high at 92.3%, reflecting a trend of resilience in the planning process. It is extremely unlikely that the fiscal pressures on local authorities are going to abate anytime soon, and therefore pressures on resourcing local authority planning departments will continue. The private sector needs to accept that reality and see what can be done to assist in alleviating that pressure. As demand evolves, especially with economic shifts, this highlights the need for improved communication, collaboration and flexibility between the public and private sectors to address planning challenges. Streamlined processes are essential for unlocking the potential of redevelopment projects, but that process improvement should be a joint effort with all that are involved in development whether in the public or private sector having an important role to play. In particular, is there a role that AI can play in helping with these process improvements?

Appropriate consideration to city centre management needs to be given too. Seemingly minor issues such as bin storage and collection arrangements for city centre listed buildings are preventing potential city centre redevelopments from getting off the ground. Constructive solutions need to be found in order to ensure the existing city centre is redeveloped rather than having have these buildings, which are very much part of the city’s heritage, placed in the “too difficult” category and development moved elsewhere out with the centre onto “easier” brownfield sites which are less constrained.

One potential solution highlighted at one of our events could be having a directly elected regional mayor who could be an advocate for Glasgow as well as one high profile contact point through which public and private sector enterprise and development ideas could be promoted and coordinated. The mayor could be a conduit to coordinate all of the relevant public sector departments including planning, with the goal of promoting development and maximising jobs and wealth creation for the city.

Gaining a wider perspective – MIPIM 2025

One of the great benefits of being able to attend the world’s leading international real estate event is the opportunity to gain a wider, truly global perspective – to discuss common challenges, exchange experiences and gain new insights on market developments and trends.

Given our focus on urban regeneration in Glasgow, we will be particularly interested in the ongoing transformation of the rental living sector fuelled by shifting demographics, urbanisation and evolving lifestyle preferences. We are keen to understand how developers and their professional teams operating in the co-living, family build-to-rent, and senior living rental market are meeting rising demand across the UK and Europe, whilst addressing challenges such as planning delays, build cost inflation and sustainability requirements.

Hearing how other cities are repurposing older structures to meet contemporary needs will also be of key interest given the trend for converting outdated office buildings into residential units in several UK, US and European cities.

We also want to explore more generally the ways that the role of the city centre is being reimagined and adapted for the needs of the future, the best policies to boost resilience, what the right mix is, and what that will mean for commercial real estate.

Get in Touch

Caroline Summers and John Meehan are partners in Harper Macleod’sCommercial Real Estate team based in Glasgow. Along with Ross Thomson, based in the firm’s Inverness office, they will be in Cannes during MIPIM from 11th to 14th March. Interested in catching up with us in Cannes? Please contact us to organise a catch up.