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
Link to buy
Regional and Local Economic Development
Link to buy
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:
A public services watershed
This first appeared in Planning on 16 January 2004 and is reproduced by kind permission of Planning Resource.
Covid 19 in rapidly urbanising countries
UN Habitat has published its response to the serious problems posed by the pandemic in Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Arabic countries. Over 95% of Covid 19 cases are in urban areas. There are 1 billion people living in informal settlements, and 2.4 billion people lack adequate access to safe water and sanitation.…
OBE
This blog was first posted in October 2016. Earlier this week I was honoured to receive the OBE for services to planning, at an investiture at Buckingham Palace. The award of the OBE was made in the Birthday Honours list in June 2016. The investiture ceremony that I attended was held at Buckingham Palace, and…
Lessons in Community Planning from Australia
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 1 August 2011. The Localism Bill in England is creating new Neighbourhood Development Plans. The bill will also provide powers to communities to bring forward a ‘community right to build’. So this is a good time to distil key messages from experiences with community…
Rethinking the role of museums and public galleries
Here in UK, and particularly in the North of England, museums and public galleries are being closed down as councils struggle to cope with real reductions in income forced by the UK government’s austerity programme. In USA it is a different story. Many towns and cities created public galleries and museums in the nineteenth century or early…
Forced evictions – there are alternatives
News from Sierra Leone that 9,000 slum dwellers have been made homeless by demolition of their homes highlights the need for planners to fundamentally rethink conventional approaches to housing the poor. The new Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN commit governments to inclusive cities. In particular one target for the “Urban Goal”, Goal 11, is “By 2030,…
New post as Chair of leading urban conservation and planning body
This item was posted in May 2016. I am pleased to confirm that I will become Chair of the Cockburn Association in June, when the present Chair, Lord Brodie, steps down. The Cockburn Association is one of the oldest urban conservation and planning organisations in the world. It was formed in 1875 and has a distinguished history…
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…
Rio +20 – Time to create a Storyline
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 22 September 2011. Next year will see the twentieth anniversary of the landmark UN “Earth Summit” that was held in Rio de Janeiro. Will the 2012 “Rio +20” summit in Brazil next June become a new landmark or an epitaph for environmentalist dreams? What strategy should…