Kategorie: New Items

The Cockburn Association, Edinburgh’s Civic Trust,  is seeking a new Director. The Cockburn Association is Edinburgh’s leading civic organisation. Formed in 1874, it has contested numerous bizarre „improvements“ to the city, such as a car park in East Princes Street Gardens, multi-storey car parks in Queen Street Gardens, and an Inner Ring Road built on…

The first issue of a new journal gives insights to new ways of thinking about cities. „Conscious Cities proposes a radical shift away from the last few decades’ prioritisation of efficiency over more people-centric considerations“ argues Itai Palti in his editorial to the first issue of the journal Conscious Cities. He is a practising architect and…

Ruthless developers are literally undermining a Kenyan school in an attempt to capture the rights to valuable land, alleges a priest with wide experience of the country. Most new development in Kenya is informal. Land piracy has long been a significant factor in urban development. Schools have become especially vulnerable, so much so that in…

Planners on an innovative post-graduate course in Zambia are being trained to understand how informal development operates and how to deliver pro-poor planning. The scale of the challenges in rapidly urbanising African cities is familiar. What is less common is the direct engagement of planning students with the day to day realities of life in…

A Brexit-induced crash in the markets seems likely to set the framework for the work of planners in the months ahead. I am writing early on Monday afternoon, 27 June 2016. The Pound has fallen to a 31 year low; shares in Barclays are down 12%, in the Royal Bank of Scotland 14% In the…

I am pleased to confirm that I will become Chair of the Cockburn Association in June, when the present Chair, Lord Brodie, steps down. The Cockburn Association is one of the oldest urban conservation and planning organisations in the world. It was formed in 1875 and has a distinguished history in campaigning to conserve and enhance the…

Civic pride and civic trust are important for community cohesion and well-being, but are being eroded by austerity and a centralised system of planning and local government. This was a central theme of the  inaugural Scottish Civic Trust Annual Lecture which I delivered in Edinburgh on 2 March. Scotland’s 5.2 million people are served by…

New Zealand’s right-wing minority government is amending the legislation that defines the planning system, to address what it calls problems with „cumbersome planning processes“. The Minister, Dr Nick Smith called it „a moderate reform Bill that will reduce the cost and delays for homeowners and businesses“. He introduced the Bill to amend the Resource Management…

Around 8 million live in Afghanistan’s cities today, but that number is expected to double by 2030.Yet, like many other rapidly urbanising countries, it has no national urban policy, no housing policy, and local planning is weak. The country remains predominantly rural, with only 1 in 4 living in urban areas. However, a recent report by…