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 to tackle the challenge of place branding?
Place brand management is the theme of an article in the current issue of Town and Country Planning, the excellent little magazine produced by the Town and Country Planning Association. Its authors, Sonya Hanna and Jennifer Rowley, stress the need to involve stakeholders in the process. This means not just local residents, but also visitors and businesses. They…
A Tale of Two Cities: Fellini’s Roma and Davies’ Liverpool
Like many planners I am a fan of the movies, and especially fascinated by films where place is central to the narrative. Over the weekend I was lucky enough to see not one, but two films about cities. They have a lot of similarities but also many differences. They areFellini’s Roma and Terence Davies’ reflections on…
Metropolitan challenges and affordable housing
This blog was first posted in February 2020. After the pomp of the opening ceremony, the 10th World Urban Forum got involved in two critical issues. How to plan and manage metropolitan areas? An event organised by ISOCARP focused on this urgent theme. A range of leading figures from organisations that included the World Bank,…
Temporary use of vacant spaces and buildings
Whether it’s an old church or the shell of a derelict factory, a gap site or an under-used parking lot, vacant land and buildings are a headache for planners and regeneration professionals. The impacts of vacany stretch beyond the site, creating a sense of decline and blighting neighbourhoods. Yet these left overs can be the…
Informal development, planning and sustainable urbanisation
The third report on The State of African Cities , published in 2014, shows how informal development is a key force in the continent’s urbanisation, yet also poses major dilemmas. The report’s sub-title “Re-imagining sustainable urban transitions” suggests both the need to come up with new answers, but also the elusiveness of solutions. Anybody interested in Africa,…
Connecting museums to communities
The nature of museums has been changing dramatically. Until the 1970s they were pretty much a place run by experts for experts. They housed collections of artefacts that needed to be preserved – hands off! Cliff Hague 2014-02-04 They were dim and dusty: Museum, once places where exhibits were protected under glass, each one carefully catalogued…
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…
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,…
Best ways to enhance Edinburgh
I gave the Cockburn Association annual lecture in Edinburgh on 27 October 2016. I have now written it up and you can read it. The Cockburn Association was formed in 1875 and can claim to be the oldest civic association in the world. It is a pleasure and an honour for me to be its Chair and…
Local food networks – how what you eat can drive local developmentv
Local food networks are attracting increasing attention. This week I picked up Issue 1 of Nourish Scotland Magazine, which is produced by Scotland’s sustainable food network. Pete Richie, Director of Nourish Scotland, sums up the organisation’s basic vision. It is to “reimagine farming as a service: and a service which is increasingly co-produced by farmers and…