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:
Hyperlocal Blogs & how they help to create an Ambient Brand
The fact that you are reading this blog suggests that you are used to getting information from the internet. In turn, I get a buzz from knowing that there are readers out there in, and maybe even beyond, “Innovation Circle Land”, who take the time to read what I write and, hopefully, get new ideas. Even…
UK projects
Planning Aid for Scotland Planning Aid for Scotland (now PAS) is a social enterprise that seeks to build active citizenship. Welsh Assembly Government UK projects while at Heriot-Watt University Cliff was part of research teams that delivered a number of practice-oriented reports for policy-makers. These include:
New possibilities for using scenario planning tools
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 24 April 2012. Scenario planning tools are increasingly being used in North America as means of community engagement. The state of the art is reviewed in a new publication that attracted attention at the recent American Planning Association conference in Los Angeles. The development of web-based GIS and…
Geddes and Fellini – Place, Work and Folk
It is doubtful if the Italian film-maker Frederico Fellini knew of the work of the Scottish luminary Patrick Geddes – biologist, ecologist, sociologist, educationalist and planner. Fellini’s films have a strong sense of place, and of the relationship between people and place, which was an important theme for Geddes. I want to explore one of…
Would you buy a Frank Lloyd Wright house to demolish it?
This item was first postedin June 2019. The Booth Cottage, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1913, which is in Glencoe, Illinois, could become the third of his buildings to be demolished since 2004. The 882 square foot cottage may be tiny, but it sits on a large lot in an affluent Chicago suburb, which…
Green Growth for Europe
This blog was first published in early 2012 on the Innovation Circle Network website. Green growth is one of the themes that the Danish Presidency of the EU wishes to advance. Denmark holds the Presidency from now until July, when Cyprus takes over. The government of Denmark has only been in power for a few…
Smart Cities, governance and urban transport
This item was first posted in 2017. How can cities in the rapidly urbanising world benefit from Smart City approaches to urban management? I am just back from my second visit to Luanda, the capital of Angola. I was running a workshop there that was wrapping up a Smart Cities project that is part of…
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,…
One Belt One Road – spatial planning at global scale?
This blog was first posted in January 2018. At an Innovation Circle Network conference in December 2017 I spoke about China’s One Belt One Road vision. This blog sketches and comments on this ambitious transnational project. In January 2017 the East Wind arrived in London. The freight train’s journey had taken 16 days and covered 12,000kms from…
Learning from Oregon
I am just back from spending 3 weeks in Oregon. What can IC members learn from that beautiful part of the world? Oregon in the Pacific North-West of theUSA shares a number of features with the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). 2012-08-30 It is relatively peripheral within the continental land mass and in relation to the major urban…