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

Some articles fromall categories:

Healthy cities

America’s obesity crisis is creating a new concern to make healthy cities, though the rhetoric outstrips the plans. A recent blog on a health website says that more than half of U.S. adults don’t meet the recommended daily requirements for aerobic exercise or physical activity. It makes the case for better planning and design to…

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Denmark’s new Architecture Policy

Posted May 26, 2014 by cliffhague  “Architecture is for people”. This is how the new Danish Architecture Policy begins. The Danish government sees architecture as defining the country at home and internationally. It is about competitiveness, moving towards sustainability and social cohesion. The new policy depicts architecture as contributing to “the development of the welfare state”, and says that local…

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Review of the Scottish Planning System

The planned reform of the planning system in Scotland will end in tears. I have an article in the newspaper The Scotsman. It draws on the responses to the consultation on the proposals by the Scottish Government to review the planning legislation. My article argues that an opportunity is being missed. Instead of looking internationally for…

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Heimatplanung (Homeland planning)

Ths blog was first posted in May 2018. As European countries become more inward-looking,  Professor Klaus Kunzmann sees a possible opportunity for planners to rebuild the reputation of their profession. While spatial planning in Germany is gradually losing its former significance and influence, a new approach to planning is rising in the country: Heimatplanung (homeland planning). Following…

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Long-established Planning course to close

The closure of one of the oldest undergraduate Planning courses in the UK has been announced. The BSc (Hons) in Town Planning at Heriot-Watt University, one of the oldest undergraduate Planning courses in the UK, has ceased to recruit new students. The course had been under pressure for some time over concerns about recruitment. To…

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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…

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Urban growth in Ghana – opportunity or great danger?

Ghana’s urban population has grown from 4 million to 14 million in 30 years. This has underpinned economic growth, which has on average increased by 5.7% a year since 1984. Can this continue, or is the urban future bleak? A new report by the World Bank says that urbanisation has reduced urban and rural poverty and enabled…

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A week in Czechoslovakia July 1989

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…

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Berlin, June 1989

A chance to read my monthly Diary in Planning from June 1989, which starts in Berlin just months before the Berlin Wall came down. It also looks at the Adam Smith Institute’s ideas for privatising streets – an idea that might be revived post-Covid19? Of course there have been many gated communities developed in the meantime.   This was…

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Migration, Afrophobia and Butchery in urban South Africa

The brutal murder of Emmanuel Sithole in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra is a frightening sign of the potential for ethnic divisions to destroy social cohesion and economic growth. It undermines the moral leadership that South Africa has been able to exercise since the end of apartheid. It is part of a pattern of Afrophobia…

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