Cliff Hague

Impacts of AirBnB regulation in New York

General, News Items

New York has long been a money spinner for AirBnB. In January 2023 there were 38,500 listings. As…

Planning, Sustainable Urbanisation and the Commonwealth

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Planning a Refugee Camp

Original Blogs CliffHague.com

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

Film Reviews, Original Blogs CliffHague.com

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.

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Cities for people to invest in – or to live in?

News Items, Pre-2020

We are building cities to attract investment, not cities for people to live in, argued David Harvey, the distinguished geographer, speaking in Montevideo. Harvey argued that in times of economic crisis, one escape strategy has been to invest in the built environment, as a way to create opportunities for capital and to get potentially rebellious…

Learning from Oregon

ICN Blog-2015

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…

Afghanistan celebrates World Town Planning Day

News Items, Pre-2020

This blog was posted in Novermber 2015. World Town Planning Day (8 November) was celebrated in Kabul by a national urban conference addressed by the President. Minister for Urban Development, Sadat Naderi, highlighted the Urban National Priority Programme as Afghanistan’s new framework for urban sustainability and planning according international planning standards, building upon the country’s…

Metropolitan challenges and affordable housing

Original Blogs CliffHague.com

This blog was first posted in February 2020. After the pomp of the opening ceremony, the 10th World Urban Forum got involved in two critical issues. How to plan and manage metropolitan areas? An event organised by ISOCARP focused on this urgent theme. A range of leading figures from organisations that included the World Bank,…

Athens – report from the frontline

News Items, Pre-2020

This item was first posted in May 2018. The impacts of austerity in Greece have dropped out of the headlines, but not gone away. In a vivid account of conditions in his adopted city, Belgian planner Frank d’Hondt reviews the fate of Greeks forced to suffer to repay debts to big banks. Greek unemployment remains…

The Civic Use of Heritage Assets

Blogs and small towns work for Built Environment Forum Scotland

My blog published on the website of the Built Environment Forum Scotland on 1 December 2015 arges that the “hollowing out” of local government has seriously diminished the capacity to cherish the historic environment as a civic asset.Click here to read the blog. The blog discusses a particularly controversial development proposal in Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site. Click here…

A Tale of Two Cities: Fellini’s Roma and Davies’ Liverpool

Film Reviews

Like many planners I am a fan of the movies, and especially fascinated by films where place is central to the narrative. Over the weekend I was lucky enough to see not one, but two films about cities. They have a lot of similarities but also many differences. They areFellini’s Roma and Terence Davies’ reflections on…

Stockholm My Love – the redemptive potential of a city

Film Reviews, Original Blogs CliffHague.com

This review was first posted in 2017. A new film reflects on Stockholm’s modernist architecture and public spaces, showing how experiencing places can contribute to wellbeing. The cinema has made icons of some cities. The global reach of Hollywood means that we are all familiar with the streets and suburbs of Los Angeles or the…

Forced evictions – there are alternatives

Original Blogs CliffHague.com

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 opportunities

ICN Blog-2015

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.…