Do they throw in a lot of sweeteners to make the planners happy? Nevermind things like green belt rules, etc. Though I am not familiar with the particulars of Scottish law (right to build is England-only I think?)

Worth noting that cycling works great in rural Netherlands too...

For what it's worth, I made a video about cycling infrastructure and urbanism in rural Ireland (where I used to live). Not the same as Scotland but maybe there are parallels - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba7xHUdeew . In some ways rural areas are better suited to bike infra than suburban because you have more space and there's generally less traffic. And many rural areas are still a reasonable distance from a town - in fact, I found that when I was driving, I'd just go to Tullamore, but on my bike, I'd ride to Clara, a much closer and smaller town. If more people did this it might help revitalize smaller towns.

I'm not seeing anything about a wave of house demolitions in Glasgow except for a lot of old postwar towers and, oddly, this - https://www.urbanrealm.com/news/2023/06/11/glasgow-house-dem... - where the house seems quite nice.