Impacts of AirBnB regulation in New York
New York has long been a money spinner for AirBnB. In January 2023 there were 38,500 listings. As…
Planning a Refugee Camp
In 2010 the Commonwealth Association of Planners held its first Student Essay competition. The winners were Jeremiah Atho…
Kes Revisited – The welfare state and community in the late 1960s
Ken Loach’s film, Kes, was released in 1969. What does it tell us about life in a coalfield…
Place Identity, Participation and Planning
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Regional and Local Economic Development
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Cliff is a freelance consultant, researcher, author and trainer. He was the Chair of the Cockburn Association 2016 – 2023.
He is Professor Emeritus of Planning and Spatial Development at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
He is a Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and of the Commonwealth Association of Planners.
He is a past Chair of Built Environment Forum Scotland.
He was awarded the O.B.E. in the 2016 Birthday Honours.
Books
Some articles fromall categories:
Smart Cities, governance and urban transport
This item was first posted in 2017. How can cities in the rapidly urbanising world benefit from Smart City approaches to urban management? I am just back from my second visit to Luanda, the capital of Angola. I was running a workshop there that was wrapping up a Smart Cities project that is part of…
Healthy cities
America’s obesity crisis is creating a new concern to make healthy cities, though the rhetoric outstrips the plans. A recent blog on a health website says that more than half of U.S. adults don’t meet the recommended daily requirements for aerobic exercise or physical activity. It makes the case for better planning and design to…
How to make urban growth boundaries work
Keys to making urban growth boundaries work as a planning tool for controlling sprawl in US cities were identified in a session in the recent American Planning Association conference. Examples of urban growth boundaries were presented from Portland, Oregon; King County, Washington; and Denver. Messages were that the boundaries are flexible and negotiable; they succed…
Europe and its neighbours
The news that the Qatari emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has bought six islands in the Ionian Sea for 8.5m Euro is a further indication of changing relations between Europe and its neighbourhood. The EU – and those of us who live in it – still see Europe as the centre of the world. After all that’s…
Territorial insight: Where to focus what types of investments
Territorial insight: Where to focus what types of investments: ESPON Results by early 2013, Second ESPON 2013 Synthesis Report (2013) https://www.espon.eu/topics-policy/publications/synthesis-reports/second-espon-2013-synthesis-report Co-author.
18 RTPI Past Presidents sign letter on planning in Palestine
18 Past Presidents of the RTPI have signed a letter highlighting the findings of a recent report on planning in Area C of the West Bank. The letter says that the report “explains how planning is being used to block development and impede much needed infrastructure investment in Palestinian villages, while facilitating the construction of…
Smart Specialisation as a development strategy in Denmark
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 18 June 2012. What kind of strategies can help regions to strengthen their performance in knowledge and innovation? This was the theme of the ESPON Open Seminar that I took part in last week in Aalborg. What emerged was a strong consensus on the importance of…
Western Balkans Realities
In the early 1990s Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, triggering a series of vicious wars as ethnic groups contested territories. I have been doing some work looking at current development in the countries of the Western Balkans. Although conditions have certainly improved over the past decade, and the World Bank now rates them as “upper middle…
City Planning and the Public Health Crisis in Palestine
City planning in the Palestinian-controlled areas has yielded poor results when it comes to unexpected challenges, including the recent outbreak of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, says local expert Dr. Ahmad El-Atrash. In this Guest Blog, Dr. Ahmad El-Atrash (pictured above) from the UN-Habitat office in Ramallah, reflects on the situation in Palestine. Palestinian cities and communities…
Effective strategic planning
This item was first published in 2015. Passion for strategic spatial planning has too rarely endured, thus undermining precisely what it needs, which is a long term perspective. So often startegic planning is disregarded or under-resourced, but used effectively it could provide a means of delivering inclusive and sustainable development. Therefore research by a practising…