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:
Zlin – Conserving a classic of functionalism
Zlin is an outstanding example of a town inspired by 20th century functionalist architecture. This classic company town was a product of the Bata shoe company, its “home town” that the company then mimicked across the continents. It survived Communism, and now a finely balanced conflict is taking place between conservation and consumer capitalism. The…
The Housing Market Crisis in Sun-Belt US Cities
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.…
The future of our urban parks and greenspaces
The value of parks needs to be rethought in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. “People are now beginning to see the value of parks.” This was a central message from New York City Parks Convenor Mitchell Silver, during our public conversation on Zoom on 25 June 2020, as part of the Cockburn Association campaign…
The Changchun City Planning Museum: A Showpiece of Urban Planning and Branding
In this blog first posted in 2017, Guest blogger Klaus Kunzmann explores a museum devoted to the history of urban planning in a Chinese city. Klaus Kunzmann reports from China Urban planning enjoys high esteem among policy makers in China. This is perfectly demonstrated by an impressive new museum in the old industrial Northeast of…
WUF10 – Global Planning Aid
This blog was posted ahead of the tenth World Urban Forum, in Abu Dhabi 8-13 February 2020. Despite many endorsements ofthe idea for Global Planning Aid at the WUF, it proved not possible to raise the pump-priming funding required to set up a pilot project in Banjul, The Gambia. The CHOGM planned for 2020 was…
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…
A World Viewtime-line of planning over the past century:
In 2013 I helped RTPI construct a timeline to tell the story of planning 1914-2014 for their centenary year. Inevitably the focus was on the Institute itself and events in the UK. However, it set me wondering what a “World View” of planning over that 100 years might look like? If you had to nominate…
Time tested principles for successful place-making
How do you create attractive and environmentally sustainable places? A new, updated edition of a major text provides powerful lessons and evidence. The first edition of Randall Arendt’s Rural by Design was published 20 years ago, and became a classic resource for a generation of planners and urbanists in North America. The new edition is even better, and has…
Scotland’s Planning Bill – who will “frontloading” work for?
This blog was first posted in December 2019. The passing of the Scottish Planning Bill marks the end of a tortuous period, during which it even seemed possible that the Bill might be withdrawn, so heavily had it been amended. However, the conflicts that surfaced are unlikely to go away. What changes has the Bill…
Cities for people to invest in – or to live in?
We are building cities to attract investment, not cities for people to live in, argued David Harvey, the distinguished geographer, speaking in Montevideo. Harvey argued that in times of economic crisis, one escape strategy has been to invest in the built environment, as a way to create opportunities for capital and to get potentially rebellious…