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:
Participative Planning post-Covid: Lessons from Scotland’s charettes
Dr.Michael Kordas provides insights into the use of charettes for participation in planning – before and after Covid 19. Dr. Michael Kordas provides this guest blog that raises important questions about how the changes forced by the Covid 19 pandemic might impact on participatory methods like charettes. My doctoral research investigated the impact of the…
Lord of the (Pineapple) Rings
In a week when my term of office as President of the Royal Town Planning Institute came to a close, I also faced being made redundant. This largely inconsequential article that I wrote in 1997 is redeemed by the photo of me wearing my Eric Cantona T-shirt while meeting a pirate. It also provides some…
Rural links vital for sustainable cities
The increasing global emphasis on the cities must not obscure the importance of rural areas and their links to cities. This is the argument in a valuable thoughtpiece by Christine Platt, Past President of the Commonwealth Association of Planners in reflecting on the preparations for the Habitat III summit in Quito in October 2016. Reflecting…
Leading Change: Delivering the New Urban Agenda through Urban and Territorial Planning
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Training planners to work with informality
Planners on an innovative post-graduate course in Zambia are being trained to understand how informal development operates and how to deliver pro-poor planning. The scale of the challenges in rapidly urbanising African cities is familiar. What is less common is the direct engagement of planning students with the day to day realities of life in…
Urban post-2015 UN sustainable development goal update
Posted September 26, 2014 by cliffhague The ‘urban’ goal remains in the list that the UN general assembly is considering this week. As long as it gets through, then adoption next year should be a formality, unless some country really wants to make an issue about it. As not much information is available about this, and it is an issue…
Shaping Places
The idea that place is important – economically, socially and environmentally – has gathered pace in recent years. Therefore the new book Shaping Places: Urban Planning, Design and Development is welcome. It is written by David Adams and the late Steve Tiesdell, colleagues at the University of Glasgow before Steve’s untimely death in 2011. …
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…
Participation?
How to have your say in the planning system. A scandal has broken out over a controversial decision by the English planning minister. As has been widely reported in the UK, the Minister, Robert Jenrick, overturned the recommendations of the independent Planning Inspector and awarded a consent for a £1billion 1,500-apartment, 44-storey development in London.…
Spatial Planning in Europe – the last 100 years
The European Council of Spatial Planners has just published a book to mark “A Centenary of Spatial Planning in Europe”. It is a compendium in which the Introduction is followed by 32 chapters that range far and wide in their concerns and approach. What does the book tell us about where planning in Europe has come from…