Abstract
This chapter is concerned with nineteenth and twentieth century Glasgow, a city that had worse health outcomes than even the poorest parts of London and large parts of the Empire. It demonstrates the key characteristics of the medieval-based property law system in operation in Scotland and also discusses the collapse of the City of Glasgow bank in 1878 and its impact; subsequently, no other major bank failures occurred in the UK until the Northern Rock during the Global Financial Crisis. This introduces the issue of housing volatility and cycles. In addition, this chapter considers the development of social housing in twentieth century Glasgow. Finally, the chapter discusses the extent to which distinct submarkets have persisted across Glasgow, by modelling the relationship between modern local house prices and rental values in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is written in memory of former colleague and historian of Glasgow, Andy Gibb.
- 2.
Maclennan and Gibb (1988), estimate that real rents grew by 25 % between 1914 and 1915 while restrictions precluded new supply at the same time as an influx of people to the city occurred.
- 3.
Wightman’s book is a reasoned account of the need for further and more comprehensive land reform. The Scottish Parliament is currently (February 2016) legislating further land reform.
- 4.
We return to this key elasticity for later time periods in the next chapter.
- 5.
The results using 1881 rental values were broadly consistent, standardising for the available observations.
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Meen, G., Gibb, K., Leishman, C., Nygaard, C. (2016). Speculation, Sub-division, Banking Fraud and Enlightened Self-interest: The Making of the Contemporary Glasgow Housing System. In: Housing Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47271-7_6
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