Urbanist & Author
Ronald McGill
First, the Urbanist.
Urban 'challenge'. GIS supported environmental / infrastructure threshold analysis for spatially efficient plans.
Integrated urban development (policy and budgetary) strategies, with community engagement.
Institutional 'response'. Policy & legal context; organisational structures; planning processes analysis.
Capacity assessments and resulting building: design and delivery through ‘learning-by-doing’ training.
Leadership – team leading and nurturing: helping communities in problem-solving and planning.
Performance budgeting (PB): output accountability to HQ and local clients. PB exposure in China and Iran.
Research – recent journal papers on DFID's 'new urban discourse' and 'urban resilience' (both 2020); ‘green urban development’ and the ‘science of town planning’ (both 2023).
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Then the first book,
Three Royal Terrace.
Three Royal Terrace is written through the eyes of my autistic son. He has no spontaneous language, thus I was "giving him a voice"! It conveys not only his challenges but also, the frequent anguish for his three siblings and his parents.
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And the second,
The Expatriate.
The Expatriate centres on me and my young family's experience in Malawi. However, the first part gives insights into life as a private soldier in the British Army. That culminates in Aden when the British were being pushed out. For many, the army can be a salvation.
It moves to the fight to enter, and the subsequent experience of, university education: in my case the five-year town planning degree course at Heriot-Watt University.
The book includes a tribute to magical north-west Cumbria (Ch 10). I was in my late 20s. There, I managed to combine town planning and historic town centre renewal with new-build housing and conservation funding. It inspired my first technical journal paper. Ten years later, I would have stayed.
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​But wanderlust took hold! London (with Taylor Woodrow) then internationally, Malawi, Tanzania, New York (with the UN), Ethiopia, Tanzania again, Kenya and finally Uganda.
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The contemplative picture is from Addis Ababa in 2023, leading a GGGI study tour for four Ugandan secondary city mayors and their physical planners, to GGGI Ethiopia. The more inquisitive version is in a coffee bar in Kampala's Acacia Mall in August 2024, after work had finished!
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Finally, more about Ron.
I close with the June 2024 picture of a spirited farewell from my
Global Green Growth Institute colleagues in Uganda.​
