Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .
For decades, urban planners, politicians, consultants, and development agencies have promised that better measurement would lead to better cities. If we could count enough things, compare enough indicators, and benchmark enough municipalities, urban development would become more efficient, rational, and successful. Today, cities are drowning in indicators: Smart City...
For decades, urban planners, politicians, consultants, and development agencies have promised that better measurement would lead to better cities. If we could count enough things, compare enough indicators, and benchmark enough municipalities, urban development would become more efficient, rational, and successful. Today, cities are drowning in indicators: Smart City...
BEYOND PEAK INDIFFERENCE #1 – I am currently organizing moderating a conversation series “Beyond Peak Indifference” which puts climate change on the agenda differently. Rather than designers talking to...
Every year on April 27 (this year marks an exception and King’s Day is celebrated on April 26th because it’s never on a Sunday), the Netherlands transforms into a...
For two weeks, I have been hiking in Germany with my sons. For once, not being in a car or on a bike but solely dependent on your own...
If Shenzhen is the city that prototypes the future and Hong Kong is the one that invented it, then Dongguan is the quietly brilliant cousin who actually manufactured the...
Future life in extremely hot climate Four degrees are what scientists predict the temperature will rise in the Middle East by mid-century[i] – twice the global average. Record temperatures...
When in 1910 Adolf Loos gave his lecture and subsequently published his essay “Ornament and Crime” it was a reaction to the Arts and Crafts movement with its overly...
Nederland bevindt zich in een zeldzaam moment van heroriëntatie. Een nieuwe generatie politici neemt het voortouw, met Rob Jetten als beoogd minister-president. Zijn campagne heeft een toon gezet van...
World climate is a complex system – a system whose behaviour we can only grasp to the extent that we can make short term qualitative forecasts. Predicting the weather...
For decades, urban planners, politicians, consultants, and development agencies have promised that better measurement would lead to better cities. If we could count enough things, compare enough indicators, and...
The “15-minute city” — that seductive vision of urban life where everything you need lies within a short walk or cycle from home — has become the darling of...
It took a while to finally conclude who will be President of the United States from January 20th on. The outcome in the end is what was predicted. But...
What Western Planning Misses About Urban Life in Africa For decades, African cities have been treated as incomplete drafts of somewhere else. They are measured against Paris, London, Singapore...
If you have to believe the Dutch government, the country is lacking around 1 million homes. That is a staggering number for a country with 17.5 million inhabitants. One...
Europe has been praised for its cities. Wherever I go in the world I get the same stereotypic answers when asking people for their favourite places: “Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin,...
There it stands: brick by brick, half-finished, oddly proportioned, unmistakably itself — the ugly Belgian house. Its façade is a patchwork of mismatched bricks, a balcony added as an...
Recently a new book was published, showing the “radical architecture of the future”. Architects seem to love the word radical. If we look at the less prosaic reality of...
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...
At RIXARCH 2026 in Riga, I my lecture [LIV]-[IN], the Hyphen between housing and living, I spoke about the expansion of living beyond housing and the architectural question of public space. The lecture explores how living developed from a single location housing into a multi-location practice where we use different places during different times of […]
At RIXARCH 2026 in Riga, I my lecture [LIV]-[IN], the Hyphen between housing and living, I spoke about the expansion of living beyond housing and the architectural question of...
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.
