Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .

The Geography of the next War

How drones are redrawing our cities, our industries and our understanding of resilience. I am in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh and the city feels different today. The drone alerts that punctuated daily life only a short while ago have disappeared, and on the surface the city has returned to...

The Geography of the next War

How drones are redrawing our cities, our industries and our understanding of resilience. I am in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh and the city feels different today. The drone alerts that punctuated daily life only a short while ago have disappeared, and on the surface the city has returned to...

Collections

Writing

The Tyranny of the Vibrant Mixed-Use District

Anyone who has spent enough time in architecture, urban planning, development, or local government will recognize the genre immediately: A project team is “excited to announce” that it has...

The power of cities.

Covid-19 makes it evidently clear: What happens in Wuhan affects what happens in New York, and what happens in Milan has an impact on what happens in Shanghai. This...

THE SQUARE THAT HELD THE WORLD

A Novel Paris Before the Line On the mornings when the light arrived softly over the Seine, Leonie Moreau believed the world might yet be persuaded. She lived on...

The Little Red Book

Rediscovering urban China after Covid Since more than 20 years I have been travelling to China several times a year. In this time I have seen the country developing...

The Geography of the next War

How drones are redrawing our cities, our industries and our understanding of resilience. I am in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh and the city feels different today. The drone alerts...

Writing

The power of cities.

Covid-19 makes it evidently clear: What happens in Wuhan affects what happens in New York, and what happens in Milan has an impact on what happens in Shanghai. This...

The Little Red Book

Rediscovering urban China after Covid Since more than 20 years I have been travelling to China several times a year. In this time I have seen the country developing...

The Bubble has a BIG Hole – and now?

Since more than twenty years, I am regularly coming to China. Ever since I went there for the first time, there have been talks that the real estate bubble...

Latest Speaking

Latest Teaching

About Me

Markus Appenzeller

I have spent my career moving along the boundaries of architecture, landscape, and urban planning—spaces where disciplines overlap, cities evolve, and new ideas emerge. From London to Shenzhen, Semarang to Accra, my work is driven by a fascination with how places grow, adapt, and shape the lives of the people who inhabit them.

Writing, speaking, and teaching are essential parts of that journey. They allow me to question assumptions, share what I’ve learned, and learn from others in return. I write to make sense of the forces shaping our cities, to communicate ideas clearly, and to provoke thoughtful debate. I teach because every new generation of urbanists brings perspectives that push the field forward. And I speak publicly to connect practice and policy, bridging the gap between technical expertise and the broader conversations cities need.

Today, alongside my work with MLA+, I serve as Chief Technical Adviser to a nationwide spatial planning reform in Saudi Arabia with UNDP and UN-Habitat. When time and context allows, I am also teaching and have been heading the Urbanism Department at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and at the Shenzhen International School of Design

Cities are constantly changing; my motivation is to help steer that change – in words and deeds –  toward more resilient, thoughtful, and inspiring futures.