Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .
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...
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...
The day Donald Trump was elected, I was attending the World Urban Forum in Cairo. Contrary to what many of us believed, it wasn’t just the white, aged countryside...
The year is almost over. No time to conclude but to reflect and a time to state where we stand. One of the most striking things to me was,...
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...
When Chancellor Merz spoke of the “Stadtbild,” he turned an architectural term into a moral mirror — and revealed more than he intended. Some words lead quiet lives. They...
and how to fix it I have to make a disclaimer upfront: I am a great admirer of Constantinos Doxiadis, a Greek urban planner that has literally groundbreaking work...
If you ask ordinary people but also many architects or urbanists what measures should be taken to make cities ‘greener’ there is a 99% chance that they will say:...
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...
What that could mean to urbanism in Saudi Arabia Last week, news outlets reported about the cutting back of ‘the Line’, Saudi Arabia’s most iconic and controversial mega project....
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...
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...
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 current Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has changed the city profoundly and in no time – at least measured by the standards of urban planning. That much is...
Across Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, green has become the color of ambition. National programs promise billions of trees. Developers present shaded boulevards and generous...
About every second book about cities starts with the announcement that we are now living in an urban age with more than 50 percent of the world population calling...
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...
Riyadh has never been a city at rest. From tribal camp to oil capital, from desert silence to the roar of six-lane highways, it has lived many lives. Today,...
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....
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.
