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:
Development and planning in Cyprus
Last week in Cyprus, I was able to get some insights into the development challenges facing this part of Europe. In a snapshot, Mediterranean islands like Cyprus were early cradles of urbanisation and often have a rich archaeological legacy. They were poor agricultural areas until mass tourism began in the 1970s. The boom saw the…
External expert on ESPON (2013) projects
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. Some of its projects support transnational work amongst networks of…
WUF10 – Disasters waiting to happen
This is my third blog from the 10th World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi in February 2020. Today has not been a disaster! Far from it, there have been some really good stories to hear at the World Urban Forum. But I want to put the theme of disasters at the heart of this blog.…
BREXIT – A blow to the European planning community
This blog was first pubished in 2016. Klaus Kunzmann, distinguished professor of spatial planning at the Technical University of Dortmund, gives his reaction to Brexit and ponders what it means for planning and planners. England (though not Scotland) has voted for Brexit. It will take months until those who voted against Europe will realize that…
Berlin, June 1989
A chance to read my monthly Diary in Planning from June 1989, which starts in Berlin just months before the Berlin Wall came down. It also looks at the Adam Smith Institute’s ideas for privatising streets – an idea that might be revived post-Covid19? Of course there have been many gated communities developed in the meantime. This was…
Can innovation save town centres?
Town centres are dying. The economic crisis has highlighted the malaise. There are empty shops, as people head to the edge of town supermarket. Internet shopping replaces the trip to the store downtown. Prominent buildings once used for public functions such as town halls, post offices or churches stand empty too, as services have been…
Elites treat the poor as disposable citizens – CV19 in India
Dispatch from Delhi on the CV19 crisis in India’s cities. “The COVID-19 pandemic is deepening the existing ruthless and exclusionary practices in India’s big cities, where elites treat the poor as ‘disposable citizens’ clearly evident when we see thousands of poor migrants being stranded in the middle of nowhere, whereas the upper-class people continue to…
Going local – A new era for planning in Botswana
Posted April 21, 2014 by cliffhagueShare I was in Botswana recently. Planning there is going through a significant transformation. New legislation that came into force in April 2014 will see significant devolution of planning powers to 16 District-level authorities. Twelve of these are rural. As planning goes local the challenge will be to deliver a more…
ERASMUS + the young Eyes project
Erasmus+ http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/index_en.htm is an EU programme supporting education, training, youth and sport. In 2015 Cliff worked with the partners in the Young Eyes project to develop a set of Guidelines for the delivery of the project.
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…