Kategorie: Original Blogs CliffHague.com

  • Trump, planning and cities

    The guest blog by Klaus Kunzmann reflecting on the likely impact of Trumps’s victory prompted me to respond with some more ideas. Klaus Kunzmann has pointed to the potentially negative impacts on planning arising from Donald Trump’s ascendency to the US presidency.  It is difficult to disagree with his dystopian prognosis. An active attempt to ignore the Paris…

  • Best ways to enhance Edinburgh

    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…

  • Should gentrification be a concern for planning?

    Should gentrification be a concern for planning?

    Gentrification is an issue in cities across the world, but urban planning systems are ill-equipped to deal with it. When modern planning systems were first constructed, the word “gentrification “ did not exist. It was coined by the sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab/news/ruth-glass-seminar). She explained how “One by one, many of the working class…

  • How and why the world fell back in love with planning

    How and why the world fell back in love with planning

    The Habitat 3 conference in Quito this month is a critical opportunity to shape the practice of planning globally. After a long period during which planning was seen as an irrelevance or worse, the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2016-30 gave it renewed importance. Goal 11 is to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe,…

  • Seeing Europe through Young Eyes

    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 young people can, and will, shape the future.…

  • Brexit – Why and what next?

    Why has Brexit happened and what happens next? I am writing a few hours after the result was declared and before all the detailed analysis that will surely follow. But in some respects that does not matter – indeed, one of the themes of the referendum campaign was that „facts“ from „experts“ were not to…

  • Habitat III – The New Urban Agenda

    Habitat III – The New Urban Agenda

    The zero draft of the New Urban Agenda, the declaration that the governments of the world will sign up to in October 2016, gives a prominent role to more proactive and inclusive urban and regional planning. The draft document makes a ringing early statement: „We commit to a paradigm shift in the way we plan,…

  • Time tested principles for successful place-making

    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…

  • Effective strategic planning

    Passion for strategic spatial planning has too rarely endured, thus undermining precisely what it needs, which is a long term perspective. So often startegic planning is disregarded or under-resourced, but used effectively it could provide a means of delivering inclusive and sustainable development. Therefore research by a practising planner on effective strategy-making is welcome. Jan Vogelij has…

  • Rethinking the role of museums and public galleries

    Here in UK, and particularly in the North of England, museums and public galleries are being closed down as councils struggle to cope with real reductions in income forced by the UK government’s austerity programme. In USA it is a different story. Many towns and cities created public galleries and museums in the nineteenth century or early…