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:
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…
What is a just city and how do we make it?
A free downloadable book explores the idea of a Just City. The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity aims to inspire ideas and practices to tackle the deep inequalities that mark our urban settlements. The team behind the venture invited 24 authors to address two questions: What would a just city look…
Urbanism, exclusion and change in South Asia
The changes taking place in South Asian cities are th focus of a major conference in Lahore next year, for which proposals for paper are now invited. The organisers make the point that much urban research has focused on Europe and North America, while the dramatic urbanisation of South Asia has received much less attention.…
Local food networks – how what you eat can drive local developmentv
Local food networks are attracting increasing attention. This week I picked up Issue 1 of Nourish Scotland Magazine, which is produced by Scotland’s sustainable food network. Pete Richie, Director of Nourish Scotland, sums up the organisation’s basic vision. It is to “reimagine farming as a service: and a service which is increasingly co-produced by farmers and…
For inclusive planning confront exclusion
To make places inclusive, planners and placemakers need to understand exclusion. ‘Make cities and human settlements safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable’. SDG 11 set a clear path forward for planners. Making planning an inclusive process is a central theme of the New Urban Agenda. The RTPI has called for an ‘inclusive recovery’ from the Covid pandemic, saying that this…
Dr. Keith Thomas – An appreciation
The death was recently announced of Dr. Keith Thomas who for many years taught students of planning at Oxford Brookes University. The death was recently announced of Dr. Keith Thomas who for many years taught students of planning at Oxford Brookes University. Before moving to Oxford in the mid-1970s, Keith was a Senior Lecturer in…
EU putting emphasis on towns
The Latvian Presidency of the EU has been pushing the case that towns have an important role to play in territorial cohesion. Key questions are what are the development ppotentials of towns and how can these best be realised? To this end, the ESPON programme has produced a commentary highlighting the main types of urban areas…
EU and US Congress members plead Israel to stop demolition
The Foreign Ministers of the 28 European Union countries have called on Israel “to halt plans for forced transfer of population and demolition of Palestinian housing and infrastructure” in the village of Susiya in the West Bank. Eleven members of the US Congress have also written to Secretary of State John Kerry about the plight…
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…