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:
ESPON (2013) UK Contact Point
ESPON 2013 is an applied research programme partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and partly by the 28 EU member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Its research has built an evidence base to support policy development for territorial cohesion and development. Each country appoints a National Contact Point to interpret and…
New opportunities
For over 30 years EU programmes have supported students so that they can spend some time studying at a university in a different member state. Now a new ERASMUS+ programme opens such mobility opportunities to many others. The kind of youth camps that IC has delivered over several years would seem to be eligible for support.…
How setting national climate budgets obscure the need to really tackle the climate emergency
This item was first published in July 2019. Why is the French Government failing to meet its own goals on limiting CO2 emissions? A blog by Pierre Calame provides insights into why France is not meeting its targets on energy and the climate emergency. The messages apply to many other countries too. Calame points out that successive…
City Spread and New Neighbourhoods
This blog was first posted in October 2019. A major study of health, education and sustainability in rapidly growing cities poses some difficult questions for public policy makers. What kind of neighbourhoods characterise the rapidly growing cities of Asia and Africa, and how do they contribute to – or lead us away from – achieving…
UK Launch of “Leading Change” book
A conference at the University of Birmingham on 22 March, 2018 on “Planning Challenges in the Commonwealth” was the venue for the UK launch of the book “Leading Change” My co-authored book, “Leading Change: Delivering the New Urban Agenda through Urban and Territorial Planning” had its UK launch at the conference “Think Planning – Think…
Reviving town centres
Look at your town centre as a network of gardens, a promenade, a stage and be prepared to be outrageous. This was the advice given by Julian Dobson to meeting of the Scottish Towns Partnership in Edinburgh. He stressed the need to challenge the existing narratives about town centres which are too often about decline and narrowly…
Levelling Up
What is ‘levelling up’, what are the barriers and how do you overcome them? On 15 July 2021, UK Prime Minister Johnson gave what was intended to be a major statement on ‘levelling up’ the country. It received a tepid reception, with a general consensus in the UK press that it was vague and repackaged past promises…
Urban expansion, public space and heritage
This blog was first posted in February 2018. Today at the World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur I went into three events, which spanned a wide range of themes and places.Each in its own way provoked thoughts. The Prince’s Foundation for Building Community has been working over a period of years now on developing a…
Luanda: The transformation of an African city
In November 2016 I visited Luanda, Angola’s capital, to deliver workshops on sustainable development and urban planning. I was able to gain a first hand experience of the dramatic and controversial changes in the city, which I recorded in this blog. At something over 5 million people, Luanda is now one of Africa’s major metropolitan…
Planning and politics
This first appeared in Planning on 29 November 2002 and is reproduced by kind permission of Haymarket Publications.