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:
UN-Habitat launches new urban data portal
UN-Habitat has launched a new open-access portal for urban data. Urban Data allows users to explore data from a number of cities and regions around the world and compare indicators such as slum prevalence and city prosperity. you can try it out for yourself here.
Sri Lanka plans “Megapolis” to boost growth
The Sri Lankan government recently created a new ministerial post – Minister of Megapolis and Western Province Development. The brief is to oversee the creation of a huge urban area roughly 95 kms long with the capital Colombo at its heart. The $300billion project will involve new development and urban renewal on a scale never…
What makes a region attractive to its residents and visitors?
The idea of making your town more attractive has been central to the Trans-in-Form INTERREG project in which several IC members are partners. Now an ESPON Report from the “ATTREG” project has researched this project and published its findings. It points to the fact that some of the places that have been seen as being…
Growth and the commercialisation of public space in Edinburgh
This item was first posted in November 2019. A major controversy has developed in Edinburgh over a huge development that was allowed to go ahead in the World Heritage Site without planning permission. The London-based event organisers Underbelly have a contract with Edinburgh’s city council who are paying them a reported £800,000 to stage a…
Seeing Europe through Young Eyes
This blog was first posted in August 2016. Today, it is the young people who most strongly uphold the ideal of Europe as a shared space, where people from different countries lie and work together. The Young Eyes project, that has involved teenagers from Poland, Latvia and Sweden and young professionals from Scotland, shows how…
UK projects
Planning Aid for Scotland Planning Aid for Scotland (now PAS) is a social enterprise that seeks to build active citizenship. Welsh Assembly Government UK projects while at Heriot-Watt University Cliff was part of research teams that delivered a number of practice-oriented reports for policy-makers. These include:
Time tested principles for successful place-making
How do you create attractive and environmentally sustainable places? A new, updated edition of a major text provides powerful lessons and evidence. The first edition of Randall Arendt’s Rural by Design was published 20 years ago, and became a classic resource for a generation of planners and urbanists in North America. The new edition is even better, and has…
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…
Why are national urban policies needed?
A wide ranging international review of national urban policies highlights the importance to national development of coordinated planning and well-functioning urban areas. Urban planning is seen as an economic imperative. “The argumentthat well-functioning urban areas can help to unleash the development potential of nations is more persuasive than the argument that urban policy is about…