This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 18 June 2012. What kind of strategies can help regions to strengthen their performance in knowledge and innovation? This was the theme of the ESPON Open Seminar that I took part in last week in Aalborg. What emerged was a strong consensus on the importance of…

his blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 14 June 2011. After spending a month in the USA (the reason for the lack of recent blogs) I have really begun to grasp the scale of the housing market crisis there.  The sub-prime US mortgage market triggered the global economic crisis in 2007-8.…

This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 28 September 2011. There is a clear message that comes from the modern literature about competitiveness. In a knowledge economy, competitiveness is closely tied to innovation. However, innovation is not a linear process from men in white coats in laboratories through to a commercially…

This blog was first published on the Planning Resource website on 7 March 2012. The use of major sporting events to drive development and regeneration has become increasingly controversial. Who gains? Who loses? Since the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona such spectacles have been widely seen as offering a unique opportunity to rebrand places and upgrade…

This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 7 December 2011. We are facing a “deadly collision between urbanization and climate change”. This is the warning given in the 2011 Global Report on Human Settlements published by UN-Habitat. It comes at a time when expectation is rock bottom that governments will achieve a positive…