Understanding Scottish Places helps you to better understand and compare the places where you work and live.
Visualise
Visualise how different towns inter-relate and how they depend on others around them for different services and functions.
Inform
Local and national data to inform local context and decision making, creating your place profile.
Audit
Build on your place profile with the USP Your Town Audit to collect and delve deeper into town specific data to understand even more about your place.
"The Scottish Government is delighted to have helped fund the development and refresh of Understanding Scottish Places. As a tool, the information it provides is instrumental in supporting local authorities, businesses, communities and other partners to inform planning and investment decisions to improve Scotland's places. Everyone working in towns and places in Scotland should ensure they make use of it."
Deputy First Minister & Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic, Kate Forbes
"Understanding Scottish Places is an invaluable resource, sharing detailed insight which can inspire positive change to create a better future for towns. No other platform provides data in this way."
Kimberley Guthrie, Scotland's Towns Partnership
"Through consistent and comparable data across all Scottish towns, we can reach better, more informed decisions. Understanding Scottish Places is an important tool, creating opportunities to understand, analyse and learn amongst towns through place-to-place comparisons."
Prof Leigh Sparks, University of Stirling
"As local authorities make critical decisions around investment and policy, Understanding Scottish Places allows us not only to delve into data to support decision-making, but also to easily learn from other similar places. It helps inform the actions we take."
Chris Bateman, Inverclyde Council