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:
How China’s economic woes might impact on local government
This ws first published in 2015. China’s slowing growth and rising debts have sent tremors through global markets. Urbanisation has been integral to the near double digit annual growth over recent years, so what does the slow down mean for regional and local development within China, and in particular for the local authorities? When I…
Rome demolishes long-established informal settlement citing recent migration as the issue
The authorities in Rome this week demolished the Ponte Mammolo informal settlement where some people have lived permanently for well over a decade. Claims that residents were given advanced notice of the arrival of the bulldozsrs are disputed. The migrations from North Africa into Italy have seen some 200 new and transient people living on…
Rural reform is on the OECD agenda
This blog was first posted on 8 October 2014. A new OECD report, Regions and Cities: Where policies and people meet, makes the point that regional disparities in income are widening. It calls for a place-sensitive approach to policy making, in other words it recognises that policies need to be tuned to specific characteristics of places, rather…
Conscious Cities – new ways of thinking about places
This blog was first posted in May 2016. The first issue of a new journal gives insights to new ways of thinking about cities. “Conscious Cities proposes a radical shift away from the last few decades’ prioritisation of efficiency over more people-centric considerations” argues Itai Palti in his editorial to the first issue of the journal…
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…
Commonwealth and G7 finally recognise sustainable urbanisation matters
Within a week the G7 and the Commonwealth Heads of Government endorsed actions on sustainable urbanisation. A breakthrough for the Commonwealth The 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali agreed a Declaration on Sustainable Urbanisation. This reflects 20 years of advocacy by the Commonwealth Association of Planners, amongst others. The Declaration recognises that ‘the long-term trajectory…
Should gentrification be a concern for planning?
Gentrification is an issue in cities across the world, but urban planning systems are ill-equipped to deal with it. This blog was first posted in October 2016. When modern planning systems were first constructed, the word “gentrification “ did not exist. It was coined by the sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab/news/ruth-glass-seminar). She explained how…
Using spatial data to deliver better health
Here in the UK the General Election has seen numerous skirmishes amongst the politicians about the National Health Service (NHS). They bombard us with figues in unimagnable “billions” of pounds. However, I have not seen any debate about how to make use of spatial data to make the NHS better informed and more responsive to…
A World Viewtime-line of planning over the past century:
In 2013 I helped RTPI construct a timeline to tell the story of planning 1914-2014 for their centenary year. Inevitably the focus was on the Institute itself and events in the UK. However, it set me wondering what a “World View” of planning over that 100 years might look like? If you had to nominate…
Governance in metropolitan regions
A new publication that can be downloaded for free sets guidelines for how to plan and manage metropolitan development. Unpacking Metropolitan Governance for Sustainable Development argues that new governance structures are needed in metropolitan areas. It looks at at how and why metropolitan regions work – or not – and how effective metropolitan governance can be…