I'm just back from a trip to Copenhagen.  It's famous as a city of cyclists: 52% of Copenhagers cycle to work or education every day, there are over 350km of cycle tracks, and cycling is growing f...

Strategic planning has been one of Scottish planning’s success stories – from the wealth of good work done by Strathclyde Regional Council’s structure plan team in the 1980s & 90s to TAYplan Strate...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A few weeks ago, I was invited to give presentations at a couple of Ministerial events in Edinburgh about community engagement in planning. One was a seminar about how to engage communities in cont...

[Image] What does Crianlarich make you think of? That little place signposted from miles away, only for you to blink and miss it when you get there? Somewhere to dive into the loo on the way to the...

“...think of your city as if it were a living work of art where citizens can involve and engage themselves in the creation of a transformed place ... ordinary people can make the extraordinary happ...

I'm in favour of the Big Society. I like the ideas of civil society and local responsibility that underpin it, which are on the policy agenda in Scotland as well as in Westminster. But I also bel...

As you may already know, I’m interested in how community empowerment can contribute to good placemaking. Not simply consulting or engaging communities about the design and management of places, b...

This article was written for the Kinharvie Facilitation Network, in my role as a member of the Network's steering group. Although written for facilitators, it is just as relevant for planners. Kinh...

For years, I've struggled with the concept of visioning. It's always seemed to me like a bunch of well-meaning folk agree a motherhood-and-apple-pie vision for whatever it is they're discussing -...

Engaging with communities is a big focus in contemporary urban planning - and a focus for a great deal of uncertainty about how to get it right. Most discussion tends to focus on how to involve "th...