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:
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…
A week in Czechoslovakia July 1989
This piece was first published in Planning 21 July 1989 and is reproduced by kind permission of Haymarket Publications. Because it ran over 2 pages it has to be reproduced here as two separate items The “Diary” tells of a week spent in meetings with planners in what was then Czechoslovakia. It was written just…
Warsaw: Place Identities and the European Dream
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 21 May 2012. Warsaw is sprucing itself up for the European football championships that it will host next month. This is the latest stage in its transition from the planned socialist city to the city of 21st century consumerism. At times, these two faces…
Smart Cities, governance and urban transport
This item was first posted in 2017. How can cities in the rapidly urbanising world benefit from Smart City approaches to urban management? I am just back from my second visit to Luanda, the capital of Angola. I was running a workshop there that was wrapping up a Smart Cities project that is part of…
Making Europe’s Small Towns More Attractive
The figure of Hans Clauert is used in public art in the centre of Trebbin to brand the town. How do you make small towns in rural areas more attractive? This is the central concern of a Baltic Sea INTERREG IVB project that I have been working on. Trans-in-Form brought together partners from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Poland,…
Craft-led small town regeneration
Probably the outstanding example of small town regeneration in Scotland is West Kilbride. It is a coastal town about 45 kilometers from Glasgow. It has a population of just under 5,000 inhabitants. Although it has quite an affluent population, decline had set in by the mid-1990s, when about half of the retail properties on the town’s…
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…
Europe’s Neighbourhood from a Territorial Perspective
Europe’s Neighbourhood from a Territorial Perspective, Report from the ESPON Internal Seminar in Paphos, Cyprus 5-6 December 2012 (2013) https://www.espon.eu/news-events/espon-2006-2013-events/espon-2013/internal-seminars/espon-internal-seminar-0 . Co-author.
Community involvement in valuing and managing historic buildings and sites
This blog was first posted on the website of the Built Environment Forum Scotland on 30 January 2014. Community participation has increasingly been embraced by the heritage sector. However, there has been much less analysis and evaluation of what the concept means and what it achieves. An in-depth look at community involvement is therefore welcome. It…
City Planning and the Public Health Crisis in Palestine
City planning in the Palestinian-controlled areas has yielded poor results when it comes to unexpected challenges, including the recent outbreak of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, says local expert Dr. Ahmad El-Atrash. In this Guest Blog, Dr. Ahmad El-Atrash (pictured above) from the UN-Habitat office in Ramallah, reflects on the situation in Palestine. Palestinian cities and communities…