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:
Why are national urban policies needed?
A wide ranging international review of national urban policies highlights the importance to national development of coordinated planning and well-functioning urban areas. Urban planning is seen as an economic imperative. “The argumentthat well-functioning urban areas can help to unleash the development potential of nations is more persuasive than the argument that urban policy is about…
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,…
Grid-based plans for urban extensions
This blog was first posted in 2016. A simple grid plan for urban extensions should be the basis for managing rapid urbanisation says a new UN-Habitat report. The value of a grid as an organising structure for new development is demonstrated through historic and contemporary examples from different continents. UN-Habitat’s report concludes that “The main virtue of…
World Urban Forum 9 – A missed opportunity for UK
World Urban Forum 9, in Kuala Lumpur in 2018, was an opportunity to show UK engagement with urbanisation as a global issue. It was missed. Here is the blog I posted from that event. The UK remains myopic about the opportunities and challenges of the urbanisation of the planet. We may fret about the lack…
Is Airbnb a threat to historic cities and towns?
This item was written in 2018 about a report on the impact of Airbnb and similar platforms. It calls for tighter regulation. In parts of Edinburgh, the proliferation of Airbnb and its imitators is having a detrimental impact on local amenity and community cohesion, says a new report by Edinburgh’s Civic Trust, the Cockburn Association.…
Informal development reaches Harare’s leafy suburbs
Informal development is now penetrating the formerly exclusive suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe’s main city. lLike many colonial cities the early planning of Harare sought to segregate areas by class and ethnicity. However, urbanisation and poverty are now resulting in green spaces in low density suburbs becoming the focus for informal housing that brings the poor…
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…
New opportunities for maritime spatial planning and Blue Growth
The concept of maritime spatial planning has been given a significant boost by a couple of recent actions in the European Union. As Maria Damanaki, EU Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, has commented, “Governments are waking up to the fact that we have just about reached the limit of what can be squeezed from…
Benchmarking Towns
Blog first posted on the Built Environment Forum Scotland, 6 November 2013 A broad-based system of benchmarking together with a typology which groups similar types of town could be valuable tools in efforts to regenerate towns in Scotland. These were the main messages to emerge from an afternoon workshop in Glasgow organised by Scotland’s Towns…
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…