This year's annual Scottish Planning and Environmental Law conference included an enlightening session on the new policy framework created by Scottish Planning Policy (SPP) for onshore wind turbine...

Recently I was at an interesting meeting with Iain Scott of Can Do Towns and Scotpreneur, civil servants from the Scottish Government’s regeneration & planning divisions and RTPI Scotland. The s...

Finding money for improving our towns and cities is getting harder and harder – whether you’re a business, a local authority or particularly a social enterprise. In the past you might have asked a ...

TAYplan, one of Scotland’s four Strategic Development Planning authorities, have been doing some interesting work in recent years. Their latest Strategic Development Plan for Dundee, Perth, Angus a...

I’ve only caught one episode of BBC2′s Robert Peston Goes Shopping, but I’m glad I did. It sharpened my unease about the much vaunted “death” of the High Street. There are two facts that tend to g...

This article was published in the Scottish Planner (August 2013), the journal of RTPI Scotland. I was RTPI Scotland’s representative on the Fraser Review of town centres, which reported to the Scot...

This post was written for RTPI Scotland to outline what I learnt from representing RTPI Scotland on the Scottish Government’s Town Centres Review Advisory Group. Last year, I was lucky enough to b...

The Scottish Government’s Town Centre Review External Advisory Group is due to report to Ministers in April. I’ve been representing RTPI Scotland on the Group. Here’s my update on what the review i...

Haddington in East Lothian is busy co-producing the future of its town centre – building a bright future by businesses, local authority and the community working together to plan and delivery chang...

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a fresh’n’lo approach to rural planning. It described a pioneering public/private sector collaborative approach to informing the next generation of rural plann...

Over the last five years, co-production and collaboration have become popular – the concepts of people and organisations working together to make better places, with a focus on action. For some exa...

A few months ago, I wrote about refreshing rural planning policy to encourage more rural investment, more diverse and sustainable rural economies, and thriving rural communities. Since then, respe...

In the last couple of days, I’ve twice come across the thought that towns and neighbourhoods that have ‘outlived their economic usefulness’ should have a policy of ‘managed decline’. For years I’v...

Urban Animation, WMUD, Dhu Rural and I have recently completed the Haddington town centre vision – a fascinating six month project which we believe offers a model for other town centres around the ...

The Scottish Government is currently consulting on its proposed Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill; this paper is a contribution to that discussion. It has been jointly written with Hugh Moore,...

This article was written jointly with Drew Mackie of Drew Mackie Associates, who supply support services in community consultation and qualitative research in regeneration. The article was publishe...

Working with Kevin Murray Associates, WMUD, Hamilton-Baillie Associates and VivID Ideas & Solutions, we’ve recently completed The Biggar Agenda: a community strategy for the next ten years. This is...

Reforms to the Scottish planning system mean that local authorities up and down the country are getting to grips with new ways of preparing future plans for their areas. We’re saying goodbye to the...

There seem to be more and more seminars and workshops about community engagement in planning. A common theme, to me, is that we know that we have to do it; but we not quite sure how. We’re struggli...

Glasgow City Council has just launched a public consultation on its City Vision for 2061 – its vision to shape the city’s future. This should be big news. It will shape what kind of city Glasgow w...