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:
Urban Planning and Public Health in a Rapidly Urbanising World
Posted January 3, 2014 by cliffhague The celebration of the centenary of the RTPI this year, and the centenary of the International Federation for Housing and Planning in 2013 are reminders of the origins of modern urban planning, and in particular of the historic links between planning and public health. A century on, the time is…
A new world order? Commonwealth Planners report
What are the issues that planners across the globe are grappling with? This week I attended a meeting in London of the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP). Representatives from Africa, the Caribbean and Americas, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific, and Europe gave fascinating presentations. In the space of an hour we were given a kaleidoscope of planners’…
Local food networks and the Greek bailout
The spatial impacts of the bailout deals forced on Greece have yet to be fully assessed. However, the early indications are that they will have negative impacts on small and medium sized enterprises which are so important in small towns and rural regions, and also on local food networks. One of the requirements of the…
Geddes and Fellini – Place, Work and Folk
It is doubtful if the Italian film-maker Frederico Fellini knew of the work of the Scottish luminary Patrick Geddes – biologist, ecologist, sociologist, educationalist and planner. Fellini’s films have a strong sense of place, and of the relationship between people and place, which was an important theme for Geddes. I want to explore one of…
Effective strategic planning
This item was first published in 2015. Passion for strategic spatial planning has too rarely endured, thus undermining precisely what it needs, which is a long term perspective. So often startegic planning is disregarded or under-resourced, but used effectively it could provide a means of delivering inclusive and sustainable development. Therefore research by a practising…
My recent newspaper articles
Here are links to some of my articles that have been published in The Scotsman recently (July 2019) I have had a number of columns published in The Scotsman, which is an Edinburgh-based national newspaper in Scotland. Though the articles are tagetted at that particular readership, the underlying issues are relevant in many other places, I believe.…
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…
Commonwealth, international and global projects
UN-Habitat Support to Palestinians at risk of displacement in Israeli Controlled Area C of the West Bank, 2014-15. Commonwealth Secretariat Developing Urban Planning Education, 2011. Managing urbanisation in small developing states, 2011. Hungarian EU Presidency The Territorial State and Perspectives of the European Union: Update 2011 http://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/EN/SpatialDevelopment/SpatialDevelopmentEurope Department for International Development Making Planning Work, 2006.
A creeping privatisation of public space?
This blog was first publised in August 2017. Might plans for a make-over for Edinburgh’s West Princes Street Gardens lead to a partial privatisation of an iconic public space? West Princes Street Gardens in the centre of Edinburgh are an outstanding feature of the city. They sit below the spectacular castle. A bandstand is at…
Force Majeure movie review: Explosions in a landscape
The film Force Majeure focuses on the tensions within a marriage, but it also depicts the tensions between people and the natural environment. The original Swedish title of Ruben Östlund’s internationally acclaimed film Force Majeure is Turist, which is “Tourist”. The pivotal drama in the film is the moment early on when an avalanche of snow threatens to bury the winter…