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
Place Identity, Participation and Planning
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Leading Change: Delivering the New Urban Agenda through Urban and Territorial Planning
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Some articles fromall categories:
Zlin – Conserving a classic of functionalism
Zlin is an outstanding example of a town inspired by 20th century functionalist architecture. This classic company town was a product of the Bata shoe company, its “home town” that the company then mimicked across the continents. It survived Communism, and now a finely balanced conflict is taking place between conservation and consumer capitalism. The…
Migration, Afrophobia and Butchery in urban South Africa
The brutal murder of Emmanuel Sithole in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra is a frightening sign of the potential for ethnic divisions to destroy social cohesion and economic growth. It undermines the moral leadership that South Africa has been able to exercise since the end of apartheid. It is part of a pattern of Afrophobia…
Forced evictions – there are alternatives
News from Sierra Leone that 9,000 slum dwellers have been made homeless by demolition of their homes highlights the need for planners to fundamentally rethink conventional approaches to housing the poor. The new Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN commit governments to inclusive cities. In particular one target for the “Urban Goal”, Goal 11, is “By 2030,…
Rio +20 – Time to create a Storyline
This blog was first posted on the Planning Resource website on 22 September 2011. Next year will see the twentieth anniversary of the landmark UN “Earth Summit” that was held in Rio de Janeiro. Will the 2012 “Rio +20” summit in Brazil next June become a new landmark or an epitaph for environmentalist dreams? What strategy should…
Cities for people to invest in – or to live in?
We are building cities to attract investment, not cities for people to live in, argued David Harvey, the distinguished geographer, speaking in Montevideo. Harvey argued that in times of economic crisis, one escape strategy has been to invest in the built environment, as a way to create opportunities for capital and to get potentially rebellious…
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…
The 20 minute neighbourhood: trap or opportunity?
The idea of a 20-minute neighbourhood has been grasped by urban planners and designers internationally. Guest blogger Emeritus Professor Klaus Kunzmann casts a critical eye on the concept. Recently, the 15-minute city concept has found enthusiastic supporters among planners in Europe and beyond. In Scotland’s Draft National Planning Framework 4 it is slightly adapted to be the…
The Civic Use of Heritage Assets
My blog published on the website of the Built Environment Forum Scotland on 1 December 2015 arges that the “hollowing out” of local government has seriously diminished the capacity to cherish the historic environment as a civic asset.Click here to read the blog. The blog discusses a particularly controversial development proposal in Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site. Click here…
Buildings of Empire
Posted September 1, 2014 by cliffhague & filed My summer holiday reading has been “Buildings of Empire” by Ashley Jackson. As the title suggests, this is a grand tour around landmark examples of the built environment legacy of the British Empire. Twelve fluently written chapters take us from Dublin Castle to the iconic Raffles Hotel in Singapore, before returning the…
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…