Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .
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...
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...
In the vast desert sands of Saudi Arabia, an audacious experiment captured the imagination of urbanists, technologists, and futurists worldwide. NEOM’s “The Line” — a proposed 170-kilometer-long linear city...
Recently the New York Times reported that there is a flight from the cities to suburbian locations in the wake of Covid19. This reverses a trend that has been...
There has been an interesting debate going on in Dutch newspapers in the last couple of weeks. The government plans of building up to 1 million new homes were...
When leaving the house in Shenzhen, one thing keeps striking me: I seem to only see green number plates. That needs a little explanation: in China, fully electric cars...
Beyond Peak Indifference #4 – Our time is often dubbed the Anthropocene – the earth age influenced by mankind in such a way that it profoundly changes our natural...
Recently I have been on an excursion in the center of the Netherlands in an area that is famous for its natural beauty and even features one of the...
There is a peculiar ritual that plays out with remarkable consistency across the world’s capital cities. A government, freshly energised by a new administration or a once-in-a-generation development mandate,...
A Desert Nation Confronts a Heating Planet As the world warms, few nations feel the heat as literally as Saudi Arabia. With daytime temperatures in major cities like Riyadh...
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...
When Noor, a 28-year-old nurse in Amsterdam, was finally offered a full-time position at the University hospital of the University of Amsterdam, she should have been thrilled. Instead, she...
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...
It all sounds so smart and its vision is seductive: the smart city. Imagine a place where traffic flows seamlessly, waste disappears efficiently, energy is optimized, and safety is...
As the year draws to a close, our cities brighten. Streets shimmer with seasonal lights, façades glow, and even the most ordinary corners flicker with small gestures of illumination....
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...
The world feels restless. The signs are everywhere: rivers that once defined borders are running dry, billionaires are building rockets while public schools crumble, and the internet that once...
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...
Currently, I am preparing a lecture series which will look at the differences between the global north and the global south within the same continent. In Asia, you have...
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.
