IT puts a rather cruel twist on Glasgow being called “the dear green place”. This morning the council’s planning committee – in the latest round of an eight-year saga – will consider plans to bulldoze North Kelvin Meadow for another flats development.

It’s a common story. A community preserves an important social space, only for financial and bureaucratic interests to swoop in and create an almighty muddle. If anything, the persistent threat of being tossed out has strengthened the resolve of locals in North Kelvin.

Despite the lengthy conflict with the council, petitions, protests and organising groups have created a flourishing garden amongst the tightly packed streets of urban Glasgow.

Councillor Kieran Wild, who supports the green space, will list a series of projects run in the meadow at today’s planning meeting. These range from supporting healthcare, the university, asylum seekers, teachers, play groups and local schools. That’s not bad for a patch of grass dependent on the generosity of its neighbours.

Of course the multiple social benefits of giving a community control over land could easily be ignored in favour of the multimillion-pound contracts of overinflated mortgages or high-rent tenancies. That’s the council’s instinct: sell off land that was always community space in favour of a quick buck.

Further to the east, in Glasgow’s Milton district, another land dispute is ongoing. Love Milton want to purchase land for an ambitious new community centre – and they want to train local residents to build it. Likewise, they face a council roadblock. The land is council-owned, but will only be sold off at an astronomical fee of the sort expected from private developers. End result: the land remains derelict and aspiration is stifled.

Every town and city in Scotland can recall similar tales. Wastelands. Abandoned assets. Green space sold off for a profit. Often the blame is levied at unresponsive councils, although I feel this is mistaking the symptoms for the cause.

The golden thread that links these development failures is a lack of urban land reform – in awareness and political action. The very phrase “land reform” is too often locked into a revolving-door discussion based on the folk memory of Highland clearances and desolate glens. Since devolution the greatest gains in land reform – the more than 500,000 acres now in community ownership – have taken place in rural areas, with 95 per cent of that land concentrated in the Highland and Islands or Outer Hebrides, where less than five per cent of Scotland’s population lives.

Slowly, Community Land Scotland are building a sustainable, community-focused culture where profits are reinvested and appropriate developments are encouraged. It’s having an economic impact. Lights are returning where previously there was darkness.

This success can have a nationwide impact. The Community Empowerment Act and ongoing Land Reform Bill only scratch the surface in the potential of urban land reform. In total there are 11,000 hectares of derelict land in major towns, which are concentrated in the poorest areas.

Here’s a proposal: use £500 million from the new parliamentary borrowing powers to extinguish the blight of urban derelict land, creating business, social outlets and jobs. It’s a Scottish “New Deal” – creating shovel-ready projects in areas that need them most.

At best, communities should lead the redevelopment of derelict land – like they are in North Kelvin and Milton – to determine for themselves what it could be best used for. With income tax revenue staying in Scotland from later on in the next parliament, there has never been a better time for the Scottish Government to borrow for investment. It forms a virtuous cycle – where more activity and employment means more revenue in return.

Instead of building on green-field sites, derelict land has room for 380,000 new homes – according to Professor David Adams, chair of urban studies at Glasgow University. Adams has called for stronger use of compulsory purchase orders to end derelict “land banking” and return land to productive use.

The Scottish Greens proposed removing the tax break for derelict land, so that non-domestic rates charges would provide an incentive for companies to develop derelict properties such as the failed “Waterfront” project in Leith (whose owners currently avoid contributions through a Virgin Isles tax haven).

I’m not picky. By 2020 we’ll hopefully have all three: greater investment, compulsory purchase action and an improved tax system. If that was to transpire, urban land reform could kick-start one of the most significant economic transformations in post-devolution Scotland.

The Scottish Land Fund, which supports communities buying their own land, will receive a paltry £10m this year. A 500 per cent increase and a blueprint for 11,000 hectares of development (with support from councils) is the type of action required to realise the vast potential of urban land reform. Today North Kelvin will be given its verdict. Urban land reform may come too late, but it’s coming yet for a' that.