Duncan Maclennan

Duncan Maclennan is an applied economist with interests in cities, neighbourhoods, infrastructure and housing. He is currently Professor of Public Policy at the University of Glasgow, Professor of Strategic Urban Management and Finance at the University of St Andrews and a Professorial Research Fellow in Urban Economics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

His current research is concerned with economic drivers and consequences of metropolitan investment strategies for infrastructure and housing and of the fiscal and spending autonomies in sub-national levels of government. He has recently completed work on infrastructure in Scotland, city deals and devolution in the UK, as a Knowledge Leader for the ESRC, and completed two reports for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute on productivity effects of housing outcomes and on the role of public housing stock transfers in creating successful non-profits. He plays a lead role in the cross-national collaborative housing policy project on Shaping Futures and is currently undertaking research on the presenting and modelling the economic impacts of housing investment for the Government of New South Wales and the New South Wales Housing Federation. Recently published academic work includes research on housing transitions in China, the role of housing and inequality if Piketty’s model, housing impacts on entrepreneurship, modelling regional house price cycles and city deals in the UK.

Duncan was Director of the ESRC’s Centre for Housing Research and Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow from 1983-1997, Director of the ESRC Cities, Competitiveness and Cohesion Programme from 1996-99, and Economic Adviser to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation from 1989-99 and Directed their research programmes on Housing and the Macro-economy and on Neighbourhood Regeneration in the 1990’s. From 1999-2008 Duncan worked in government. He was Special Adviser to the First Ministers of Scotland from 1999-2003, then a Chief Economist in the State Government of Victoria and Chief Economist in the Federal Department for Infrastructure and Cities in the Federal Government of Canada.

Duncan returned to Scotland in 2009 to a Chair of Economic Geography at the University of St Andrews and was Head of the School of Geography and Geosciences from 2011-14. He has recently served on the RICS Commissions for Housing in the UK and Scotland, on the Northern Housing Commission, The Fairer Fife Commission and is currently and Economic Commissioner for the Glasgow Region City Deal. He now lives in Canada and Scotland.