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:

National Planning prioritises Climate and Nature

2023, News Items

Scotland’s fourth National Planning Framework puts climate and nature centre-stage.  The Scottish Government is seeking to “transform planning” by putting the twin crises of climate and nature at the heart of the planning system. National Planning Framework 4 is one of the first national-scale planning documents in the world to confront the urgent challenges of climate…

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Afghanistan celebrates World Town Planning Day

News Items, Pre-2020

This blog was posted in Novermber 2015. World Town Planning Day (8 November) was celebrated in Kabul by a national urban conference addressed by the President. Minister for Urban Development, Sadat Naderi,  highlighted the Urban National Priority Programme as Afghanistan’s new framework for urban sustainability and planning according international planning standards, building upon the country’s…

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Seeing Europe through Young Eyes

Original Blogs CliffHague.com

This blog was first posted in August 2016. Today, it is the young people who most strongly uphold the ideal of Europe as a shared space, where people from different countries lie and work together. The Young Eyes project, that has involved teenagers from Poland, Latvia and Sweden and young professionals from Scotland, shows how…

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Land grabs target schools in Kenya

News Items, Pre-2020

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…

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The costs of displacements and demolitions

News Items, Pre-2020

In 2009-13 on average 856 persons were displaced from their homes each year in the occupied West Bank of Palestine, and 499 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished in each year by the Israeli authorities. Now research funded by the UK’s Department for International Development has put a price on the economic damage this does. A report…

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WUF10 – Global Planning Aid

2020, News Items

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…

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Sweden sets out to become fossil-fuel free

News Items, Pre-2020

Sweden has announced a big jump in spending (US$546 million) on renewable energy and climate change action in their 2016 budget,   The aim is to become one of the world’s first nations to end dependence on fossil fuels.  Significantly, Sweden’s boost for renewables comes in the run-up to the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP21) that will be held…

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The State of China’s Cities

World View Blog-2015

I have referred to Chinese urbanisation several times in these blogs, but make no apologies for returning to the topic. What is happening in China should be of interest to planners, urbanists, environmentalists and economic development professionals everywhere. In part this is because of the sheer scale of the changes – a rural to urban…

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Why civic trust is draining away

News Items, Pre-2020

This blog was published in March 2016. Civic pride and civic trust are important for community cohesion and well-being, but are being eroded by austerity and a centralised system of planning and local government. This was a central theme of the  inaugural Scottish Civic Trust Annual Lecture which I delivered in Edinburgh on 2 March.…

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