Cliff Hague

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

Blog Categories

Some articles fromall categories:

What is a just city and how do we make it?

News Items, Pre-2020

A free downloadable book explores the idea of a Just City. The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity aims to inspire ideas and practices to tackle the deep inequalities that mark our urban settlements. The team behind the venture invited 24 authors to address two questions: What would a just city look…

Read more

The Housing Market Crisis in Sun-Belt US Cities

World View Blog-2015

his blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 14 June 2011. After spending a month in the USA (the reason for the lack of recent blogs) I have really begun to grasp the scale of the housing market crisis there.  The sub-prime US mortgage market triggered the global economic crisis in 2007-8.…

Read more

Capacity crisis is hitting urban development in Pakistan

News Items, Pre-2020

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…

Read more

Planning on the West Bank

World View Blog-2015

This blog was first posted in September 2014. I am writing this blog from East Jerusalem. I have been invited over here by the UN-Habitat team based in Ramallah on the Israeli Occupied West Bank of the Jordan. The purpose of the visit is to learn about how planning is practised here, and what might be…

Read more

Development and planning in Cyprus

World View Blog-2015

Last week in Cyprus, I was able to get some insights into the development challenges facing this part of Europe. In a snapshot, Mediterranean islands like Cyprus were early cradles of urbanisation and often have a rich archaeological legacy. They were poor agricultural areas until mass tourism began in the 1970s. The boom saw the…

Read more

EU and US Congress members plead Israel to stop demolition

News Items, Pre-2020

The Foreign Ministers of the 28 European Union countries have called on Israel “to halt plans for forced transfer of population and demolition of Palestinian housing and infrastructure” in the village of Susiya in the West Bank. Eleven members of the US Congress have also written to Secretary of State John Kerry about the plight…

Read more

50 years a planner

Original Blogs CliffHague.com

This blog was first posted in August 2018. It is 50 years ago since I took up my first post as a professional planner. This anniversary moment provides plenty to reflect on. In May 1968, while students built barricades on the streets of Paris, I took the train from Manchester to Glasgow for a job…

Read more

A week in Czechoslovakia July 1989

Flashback to Cliff's Planning columns

This piece was first published in Planning 21 July 1989 and is reproduced by kind permission of Haymarket Publications. Because it ran over 2 pages it has to be reproduced here as two separate items The “Diary” tells of a week spent in meetings with planners in what was then Czechoslovakia. It was written just…

Read more