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:
Capacity crisis is hitting urban development in Pakistan
This item was first posted in October 2019. Pakistan is suffering from chronic underinvestment in urban planning. The leading newspaper in the Punjab has run a story about unfilled professional planning posts, noting some of the negative consequences. The article in Dawn, states that “Many professionals working in the public and private sectors have either left…
Land grabs target schools in Kenya
Ruthless developers are literally undermining a Kenyan school in an attempt to capture the rights to valuable land, alleges a priest with wide experience of the country. Most new development in Kenya is informal. Land piracy has long been a significant factor in urban development. Schools have become especially vulnerable, so much so that in…
How setting national climate budgets obscure the need to really tackle the climate emergency
This item was first published in July 2019. Why is the French Government failing to meet its own goals on limiting CO2 emissions? A blog by Pierre Calame provides insights into why France is not meeting its targets on energy and the climate emergency. The messages apply to many other countries too. Calame points out that successive…
The global initiative for resource efficient cities
One of the positive outcomes to emerge from the Rio+20 summit last year was the UN Environment Programme’s Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities (GI-REC) In trying to plot a way towards sustainable urban development it aims to reduce pollution and infrastructure costs while improving efficiency in cities across the world. The GI-REC will work with local…
Planning for Growth – Innovation
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 28 September 2011. There is a clear message that comes from the modern literature about competitiveness. In a knowledge economy, competitiveness is closely tied to innovation. However, innovation is not a linear process from men in white coats in laboratories through to a commercially…
The Square: the guilt and fragility of a comfortable urban life
The film The Square is about more than the excesses of contemporary art. It explores the conditions on which people are able to live in cities. In his film The Square, director Ruben Östlund dissects the contemporary urban condition. Certainly squares are geometrical shapes, and the geometrical motif is one of several images and sounds that carefully knit this…
Habitat III – The New Urban Agenda
The zero draft of the New Urban Agenda, the declaration that the governments of the world will sign up to in October 2016, gives a prominent role to more proactive and inclusive urban and regional planning. The draft document makes a ringing early statement: “We commit to a paradigm shift in the way we plan,…
An unlikely City of Culture
Cliff Hague, Professor Emeritus, urban and regional planner, academic, theorist and author of the ICN blog recently went to Cyprus where he visited Paphos, European City of Culture 2017. But according to Cliff Hague Paphos is a rather unlikely City of Culture. One that is worth to have a closer look at. 2012-12-07 I am…
Rural links vital for sustainable cities
The increasing global emphasis on the cities must not obscure the importance of rural areas and their links to cities. This is the argument in a valuable thoughtpiece by Christine Platt, Past President of the Commonwealth Association of Planners in reflecting on the preparations for the Habitat III summit in Quito in October 2016. Reflecting…