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...
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...
For more than a century, architectural education has wrestled with its own insecurity. Suspended between art and engineering, between cultural speculation and technical necessity, it has often sought legitimacy...
I am attending many conferences and workshops lately and there is one thing that keeps making me angry: the proliferation of meaningless terms everybody feels happy with. The word...
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...
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,...
In 2015, the United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a set of 17 ambitious objectives meant to guide the global agenda on sustainable development until 2030....
Time and time again, after returning from Hong Kong, Tokyo, Copenhagen, New York or Tallinn, I am appalled by the dirt and waste one is confronted with across the...
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....
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...
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...
Eight years ago Saudi Arabia embarked on a highly ambitious process to profoundly change the country within a short 15 years. They called it Vision 2030. With its three...
Take a journey. Not a comfortable one.
In the world of architecture, the colour green is no longer just a design choice — it’s a branding strategy, a virtue signal, and occasionally, a very expensive lie....
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...
Why sustainable choices are creating unexpected conflicts Every spring, the same scenes unfold on the regional railway lines connecting Berlin with the lakes of Brandenburg and the beaches of...
A public space is generally open and accessible to people is how Wikipedia defines public space. Based on this basic definition, different societies have developed their own understanding of...
I confess, I am a cycling enthusiast and every July – and since yesterday again, the Tour de France captivates me and many millions more as it snakes through...
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.
