Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .

Collections

Writing

A New Green Metabolism

I have to confess – I am a big lover of Japanese Metabolism. It was a movement in the 1960s and 1970s that imagined a better future and firmly...

The Future of ArchitectuRE

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...

20%

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...

Cities That Don’t Fit the Diagram

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...

Writing

Identity Design

Next to being a practising architect and urbanist, I am also an educator. One of the things I love when dealing with students is, that you get a preview...

Why Smart Cities Are a Stupid Idea

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...

World Cities without the World

For several decades, globalization appeared to be an unstoppable force. Goods, ideas, and people moved across borders with unprecedented ease, and cities became the laboratories of this interconnected age....

Latest Speaking

Urban Development Trends in Tbilisi and the World

BMG, a Georgian news outlet interviewed me about my view on the City of Tbilisi and what problems need to be solved there. Comparing international urban development concepts like the 15 Minute City with what the urban fabric of Tbilisi offers lead to a discussion about the right concepts to use locally: learn – don’t […]

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.