Professor Duncan MacLennan - CBE FRSE FRSA MRTPI (Hon) MCIH (Hon)

Duncan Maclennan graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1972 with an MA (First Class Honours) in Economics and Geography. He was awarded the Silver Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society as the best Scottish graduate of 1972 as well as the University Essay Prize of the Royal (UK) Geographical Society. He then pursued, again at Glasgow, an M.Phil in Urban and Regional Economics.

Duncan has spent most of the last 30 years as an applied economist at the University of Glasgow. His work has embraced a number of economic and financial aspects of housing systems, planning, urban economic development and, to a lesser extent, urban environmental issues. He was appointed to a Chair in Applied Economics in 1984 and he was then, in 1989, also made Professor of Urban Studies. In 1993 he became the first occupant of the newly endowed Mactaggart Chair of Land Economics and Finance.

Duncan has also occupied visiting Chairs in the Wharton Business School (Finance department 1988/89), the University of Cambridge (1993), The University of California at Berkeley (1996, as Regents’ Professor), the London School of Economics (1996-99) and RMIT (2002 and 2003). He is currently an Honorary Professor of the University of Glasgow and is being appointed as an adjunct professor at RMIT.

Research Programmes and Centres

Whilst holding these university posts Duncan also directed five major research initiatives, concerned with housing, regeneration and city issues. He directed the Centre for Housing Research and Urban Studies, which was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and became the leading cities centre in the UK. The Centre, which had a strong group of economists working with other disciplines, expanded its research from housing to wider city and neighbourhood change issues and employed around thirty five academic staff (with an annual requirement to raise $2.5m from external sources). The ex post evaluation of CHRUS by ESRC (undertaken in 2001) rated both the academic work and management of the Centre as excellent and innovative and the Centre attained, in 1997, the highest possible score of 5* in the UK government’s Quinquennial Research Assessment Exercise.

Whilst Directing CHRUS, Duncan also played a major role in developing the programmes of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the UK’s main funder of research on housing, regeneration and cities. He was Economic Adviser to JRF for most of the 1990’s, spent eight years of the JRF Research Committee and also Directed three national research programmes for the Foundation.

• Housing Finance and Subsidies, ($8.5 m) from 1998 to 1992
• Housing and the National Economy ($3.5m) from 1993 to 1996
• Area Regeneration ($7.2m, from 1996 to 2000)

In 1996 Duncan was appointed by the ESRC to Direct a major ($15m) Programme on the Competitiveness and Cohesion of UK Cities. After setting the intellectual direction for this programme and developing good links with government and relevant city practitioners he stepped down from the post in summer 1999.

In 1999 the Labour government implemented their plans for devolution to Scotland and the Scottish Parliament recommenced sitting (after a 292-year break). Duncan was asked by the new First Minister (the late Donald Dewar) to take a secondment from University and to serve as his Special Adviser. At the end of 2002 he returned to his University post, having played leading roles in the developments of Scottish policies for housing, neighbourhoods and cities and also central roles in the allocation of public spending, reviews of enterprise/regional policy and Higher Education.

After Devolution, before Australia

After returning to the University Duncan led a joint bid from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde to establish a new Centre for Public Policy for Regions. The bid won the national research centres competition in 2003 and Duncan was appointed Director and continued in that role until departing for Australia. He is also now completing roles as:

• Trustee of the David Hume Institute at the University of Edinburgh
• Executive Chair of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Programme on Easing Housing Shortages in Britain
• Member of the Sounding Board advising UK government Ministers (from Treasury, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department of Trade and Industry) on Regional and Spatial Policies.

These posts are illustrative of the key components of Duncan Maclennan’s work; pursuing and facilitating large scale research, supporting academic networking and cooperation across disciplinary, institutional and national borders and developing contacts and exchanges of ideas between academics, practitioners and policymakers. The key aspects of each of these three roles are highlighted below.

Key Achievements

Scholarship

Duncan Maclennan has a longstanding publication record in the field of housing economics, housing finance and the economic impact of housing systems. That core interest has extended to housing policy, neighbourhood regeneration and city and regional change. He has authored and edited some 11 books, published more than 70 papers in learned journals, contributed more than 100 chapters to edited and collected works and published close to 50 research reports. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1997 in recognition of his contribution to research and in 2002 leading international scholars in the field published a set of essays on housing economics in his honour (leading many other people to assume he was now dead).

Cross Boundary Working and Networking

Duncan Maclennan has made competitive collaboration the hallmark of his working style. The research programmes noted above created opportunities for the UK research community as a whole and Duncan was also active in establishing networking groups. He first set up, in 1978, the UK Regional and Urban Economics Study Group and it still meets. He was joint founder of the ESRC Housing Studies Group that evolved into the UK Housing Studies Association and he was a founding committee member of the European Network for Housing Research.  

Policy and Practice

Duncan McLennan’s has put considerable efforts into improving the transmission mechanisms for moving 'ideas' between the 'academy', 'policy' and ‘practice’. The UK RAE system essentially discourages staff from spending time on such efforts and a research community that values only academic publication has emerged. Maclennan believes that social science is primarily useful for its empirical insights and its capacities to inform households, institutions and governments are important. In consequence he has made major efforts to build links to policy and practice communities, often via public lectures (usually undertaking 20 to 25 per year in the UK and 10 overseas) and regular media appearances. This work underpinned his election as Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1995.

Duncan has been extensively involved in policy and research advisory capacities, both in the UK and overseas. He chaired 'Care and Repair' Scotland (a policy initiative to improve the homes of the elderly) from 1985 to 1992. He was a Board Member, with responsibility for research and strategy, of Scottish Homes (the national housing agency for Scotland with an annual budget of around £350 million) from 1989 to 1999. He has advised Ministers concerned with housing and city issues in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He has acted in an advisory capacity to Her Majesty's Treasury since the mid-1990s (on public services, evidence-based policy in government, land taxation, housing policy) as well as advising Ministers in Sweden, France and Poland (from 1991 to 1996). International activities have also included advising OECD, the World Bank, the EU, USAID and EBRD. Duncan was made a CBE for services to research and policy in Britain in 1997. He was made an Honorary Member of both the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Chartered Institute of housing in 1999 in recognition of his contributions to housing and planning in the UK.

And Now...

In the autumn of 2003 Duncan made his third visit in three years to Melbourne, was greatly stimulated by the city and its surrounds and decided that the mix of thinking and policy challenges to be addressed in Victoria was of great interest. And after almost thirty years in the same place the sense of déjà vu (again) was becoming unproductive. Oh, and 40 degrees in February is a lot more individually sustainable than minus 12!