From heat of summer and crop of mangos, another round of random reflections for your perusal:

The year 2016 gives one pause. The attacks of January 2015 in Paris were directed against free speech and religious tolerance; they failed: Charlie Hebdo sales are up, and opinion polls show that overwhelmingly, the French have positive views of Muslims, Jews and Europe. The attacks of November 2015 in Paris and July 2016 in Nice however succeeded in destablising through fear: people changed their daily routines or vacation plans. The elections in the UK and US are more difficult to characterize because this time, in the West, fantasy defeated fact, emotion triumphed over reason.

Writing random reflections on April 1 every year is somewhat squeaky; I always wonder if you would treat it as “April Fool” joke?

We have made arrangements for the reservation of a limited number of rooms for delegates with a number of hotels close to the university campus within various price ranges for the nights of 2, 3 and 4 June 2016 as follows:

I am delighted to be leading Strand 3 of the next PASCAL Conference in Glasgow from 3-5 June 2016. Connecting to complementary initiatives in holistic development is a key theme for this conference that is reflected in the Challenge Question of the conference which is directed at ways in which there can be progression in city development from a raft of silo initiatives to more holistic and integrated development of sustainable cities.