UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD THROUGH CITIES
Reform shouldn’t need a revolution. The most inconvenient instruction a computer can give you is also one of its most familiar: restart to complete the installation. Save your work, close your applications and allow the machine a few minutes to become a better version of itself. Spatial planning reform...
Reform shouldn’t need a revolution. The most inconvenient instruction a computer can give you is also one of its most familiar: restart to complete the installation. Save your work, close your applications and allow the machine a few minutes to become a better version of itself. Spatial planning reform...
How countries around the Baltic Sea could change the way the world understands and develops cities. For decades, architects and urban planners from around the world have travelled to...
London is closing Oxford Street to traffic. Other cities should be asking themselves why they haven’t done the same. London has finally done it. Oxford Street, or at least...
Why global climate targets are not enough — and why adaptation must start with the places and people actually affected. We have become accustomed to discussing climate change in...
Architecture as a method for confronting complexity. This thought piece is a reflection on the Education Symposium organised by IABR and OASE on 9 October 2026, during the Rotterdam...
The giga-project created the island. The next challenge is making the archipelago work. For the past decade, Saudi Arabia’s transformation has been represented by objects: NEOM, The Line, Qiddiya,...
Berlin needs collective housing. But buying the shortage is no substitute for building its way out of it. Berlin has rediscovered one of the oldest political responses to scarcity:...
AI appears weightless. Its urban footprint is anything but. We experience artificial intelligence as a small blinking cursor. We type a question; an answer arrives. The exchange seems instantaneous,...
Every month, I experience the same small shock: I check my bank account and discover that another collection of subscriptions has been deducted: transport, newspapers, cloud storage, entertainment, software,...
Reform shouldn’t need a revolution. The most inconvenient instruction a computer can give you is also one of its most familiar: restart to complete the installation. Save your work,...
How migration politics is drifting away from urban reality—and what that means for policy and design Cities are being asked to solve problems they did not create—and are denied...
Jürgen Habermas has died, and with him one of the last great figures of a generation of philosophers who still believed that thinking could help society understand itself. For...
Urban designers have a peculiar habit: we draw the city we would like to have. We draw streets, blocks, parks, buildings and transport lines. We discuss density, mixed use,...
Geneva’s conference halls fell silent last week as the United Nations’ much-anticipated negotiations for a global plastics treaty collapsed in disarray. Three years of painstaking diplomacy unravelled in a...
I really like the German term ‘Zeitenwende’ that can be translated as turning point but with the connotation that radical, fundamental changes are happening. On Thursday this Zeitenwende took...
Tbilisi is not the kind of city that politely introduces itself. It rushes at you all at once — a jumble of medieval alleys, baroque balconies hanging by a...
Unlike a war and unlike a terrorist attack, a virus does not destroy buildings, streets or infrastructure and it also does not use explosives. It affects the city in...
Recently, Germany has been discussing new standards for the size of parking spaces. The reason: the old ones do not leave enough space for the most popular products of...
I had the honour to be invited to the What is the Future of Cities Podcast. “Are you interested in finding the real problem of the urban fabric? What do you think about robustness vs antifragility? How can we improve our feedback loops in the building industry?” and many more questions we covered in this […]
I had the honour to be invited to the What is the Future of Cities Podcast. “Are you interested in finding the real problem of the urban fabric? What...
On 05 October 2023 I bid farewell to the role of Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In my speech, I looked back on six years in that role and what has been achieved, but I also looked forward to what the future of urbanism and urbanism education holds. After that my […]
On 05 October 2023 I bid farewell to the role of Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In my speech, I looked back on six years...
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.
