Why global climate targets are not enough — and why adaptation must start with the places and people actually affected. We have become accustomed to discussing climate change in fractions of degrees. The Paris Agreement established 1.5°C and 2°C as the defining thresholds of our climate ambitions. International negotiations, national strategies and media coverage revolve […]
Architecture as a method for confronting complexity. This thought piece is a reflection on the Education Symposium organised by IABR and OASE on 9 October 2026, during the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale: SOS — Systems of Support. The discussion about the future of architectural education raises a larger question: what should the profession itself become? We […]
The giga-project created the island. The next challenge is making the archipelago work. For the past decade, Saudi Arabia’s transformation has been represented by objects: NEOM, The Line, Qiddiya, Diriyah, the Red Sea, New Murabba. They were deliberately extraordinary—huge, highly controlled developments intended not merely to accommodate economic change but to manufacture it. Build the […]
Berlin needs collective housing. But buying the shortage is no substitute for building its way out of it. Berlin has rediscovered one of the oldest political responses to scarcity: fight over who owns what already exists. The proposal to vergesellschaften—socialise or collectivise—the housing portfolios of large private landlords—is attractive for understandable reasons. Housing is not […]
AI appears weightless. Its urban footprint is anything but. We experience artificial intelligence as a small blinking cursor. We type a question; an answer arrives. The exchange seems instantaneous, placeless and almost immaterial. But every prompt enters a physical world. Behind the screen stands an expanding landscape of windowless halls, substations, transmission corridors, cooling towers, […]
Every month, I experience the same small shock: I check my bank account and discover that another collection of subscriptions has been deducted: transport, newspapers, cloud storage, entertainment, software, perhaps a gym or delivery service. Individually, each payment appeared insignificant when I agreed to it. The service offered convenience, variety and the feeling of abundance […]
Elia Zenghelis has passed away. And it does not come as a surprise that Rem Koolhaas remembers him. But what he wrote in his obituary made me think. Koolhaas remembers not only a person, but a particular moment in architecture: a time of extraordinary confidence in the discipline and in what it might achieve. He […]
Urban designers have a peculiar habit: we draw the city we would like to have. We draw streets, blocks, parks, buildings and transport lines. We discuss density, mixed use, active ground floors, walkability and public space. Eventually, we produce an image of a future city and implicitly make a rather extraordinary claim: if we can […]
The next phase of climate planning is not simply about cooling cities. It is about redistributing growth, resources and opportunity before crisis does it for us. The familiar climate map is beginning to move. As the recent Financieele Dagblad article “Grote delen van de wereld krijgen nieuw klimaattype” describes, places that we associate with one […]
When ArchDaily published “What Is Metamodern Architecture? Between Postmodern Irony and a New Sincerity” on 24 July 2025, it offered an elegant reading of contemporary architecture. Drawing on the work of Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, the article argues that we have entered a metamodern condition – a culture oscillating between postmodern irony […]
I arrived in Vilnius with no particular expectations. I left wondering why so few European cities manage to do what Vilnius does with such apparent ease: create a public realm that feels continuous, coherent and almost effortlessly connected. It wasn’t a landmark or a spectacular piece of architecture that stayed with me after my first […]
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 normal. Traffic once again fills the […]
The exhibition halls of the Global AI Show in Riyadh I visited last week were full of certainty. Every stand promises better predictions. Better optimisation. Better decisions. Better control. Artificial intelligence, we are told, will eliminate uncertainty. I would argue the exact opposite. The greatest value of AI is not that it makes us more […]
Imagine opening the news tomorrow morning to find that a major city or region has been struck by a catastrophic earthquake. Thousands of people are feared dead. Entire neighbourhoods have collapsed. Roads have become impassable, communications have failed and emergency services are overwhelmed. Whether the next disaster happens in Caracas, Istanbul, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los […]
For decades, European planners looked at Gulf cities with quiet superiority. They saw places that were too hot, too dependent on air conditioning, too dominated by cars, shopping malls and covered spaces. Europe, by contrast, seemed to have discovered the ideal urban model: compact, walkable, bicycle-friendly, open, transparent and full of public life. The assumption […]
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 dashboards monitor everything from traffic flows […]
The most important part of a stadium is not the stadium Watching the World Cup this month, I found myself distracted by something that had little to do with football – or soccer how they tend to call it in two of this year’s host countries: The television camera would pull away from the action […]
Anyone who has spent enough time in architecture, urban planning, development, or local government will recognize the genre immediately: A project team is “excited to announce” that it has been selected to help create a “vibrant mixed-use district” that will become a “dynamic and inclusive destination” while delivering “high-quality housing,” “innovative workplaces,” “lively public spaces,” […]
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 the Baltic coast. Cyclists crowd station platforms. Families with bicycles wait anxiously as already packed trains arrive. Conductors wave people back. Arguments break out. Some travellers […]
Take a journey. Not a comfortable one.
The World Urban Forum is holding its 13th session in Baku this week. Every time I travel to one of these mega conferences, I find myself questioning their purpose. To stop these thoughts from haunting me like that little angel and that little devil on your shoulders, I have decided to put them on paper […]
There was a time – not so long ago – when plastic was not only accepted, but enthusiastically celebrated as the material of the future: Imagine – the advertisement. A sunlit kitchen somewhere in the early 1970s, filled with soft colours and quiet optimism. A smiling family sits around a perfectly arranged table. Nothing breaks, […]
Many urban planners have developed a habit they rarely question: the reflex to load every project with every possible virtue. Sustainability, resilience, inclusivity, net zero, circularity, walkability, car-free living, nature-based solutions, social equity – the list grows longer with every conference, every framework, every new acronym – from sponge city to the 15-minute neighbourhood. None […]
There is no shortage of plans. Masterplans, strategic visions, policy frameworks, pilot projects – they exist in abundance, often produced with impressive technical rigor and supported by international expertise. Shelves are full, servers are crowded, and presentations circulate endlessly between ministries, agencies, and consultants. Yet the distance between what is planned and what is delivered […]
NIMBYism – “Not In My Back Yard” – has long been treated as a local irritation. The sort of thing that happens when a new building goes up, a wind turbine appears on the horizon, or a kindergarten threatens to introduce the radical concept of children making noise. It is easy to caricature: a handful […]
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, commissions an international benchmarking study. Consultants are hired, flights are booked, PowerPoint decks multiply. Somewhere in the resulting report, Singapore is praised. Copenhagen’s cycling infrastructure receives […]
Why new cities can be engines of growth, symbols of ambition, and expensive disappointments all at once NEW Tashkent is taking shape! Recent reportings of a new city in the making in Uzbekistan present the project in the language that always surrounds new cities at birth: optimism, scale, innovation, sustainability and national confidence. It describes […]
The current Iran war is not only a geopolitical rupture; it is also a laboratory for understanding how cities, economies, and societies behave under conditions of sustained, technologically advanced, and ambiguous conflict. For urbanists and for small countries that are often more exposed, more networked, and less buffered, the lessons are unusually stark. They point […]
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 parks as proof that a new urban chapter has begun. In cities long defined by sand, stone and heat, greenery now stands for progress. The desire […]
Jürgen Habermas has died, and with him one of the last great figures of a generation of philosophers who still believed that thinking could help society understand itself. For many readers he was a demanding thinker – precise, rigorous – sometimes almost stubbornly committed to the slow work of reason. Yet behind the density of […]
Urban planners arrive in cities with a quiet sense of professional optimism. We believe that if we look carefully enough, systems will reveal themselves. Traffic will follow logic. Streets will obey hierarchy. Land uses will, at the very least, respect the concept of zoning. Bangkok challenges this optimism within roughly thirty minutes. The first encounter […]
Carbon Confessions The architectural profession has recently discovered a new genre: the public apology. Not an apology in the sense of actually changing behavior, of course. That would be excessive. Rather, the more sophisticated version: exhibitions, panel discussions, manifestos, and reflective statements about the profession’s carbon footprint. One such exhibition currently on display in Rotterdam […]
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 beyond dispute. Car traffic has been curbed, streets have been calmed, bike lanes have multiplied like well-behaved algae, and the Seine has regained a dignity that […]
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 fourth floor of a narrow building in the 11th arrondissement, where the staircase tilted slightly and the banister held the polish of a century of […]
Why Social Media Feels Like a Monofunctional City The pattern is always the same. You scroll through a social media platform or a video platform, or you buy something online, and within hours the world begins to shrink. The algorithm decides what you are now. One cycling video and suddenly your life is bib shorts, […]
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 or Dubai, and judged by how closely they resemble them. When they fall short, the diagnosis is familiar: weak institutions, insufficient capacity, lack of enforcement. The […]
Why urban economies, cultural traditions and scale produce different political outcomes Populism has become the defining political mood of the West. From Trumpism in the United States to Brexit, from Le Pen to the AfD, political life across Europe and North America is increasingly shaped by anger at – so called – elites, distrust of […]
Why Saudi Arabia’s next phase of urban growth depends less on how much it builds, and more on where it points its momentum For more than two decades, urban growth in Saudi Arabia has been discussed primarily in one direction: outward. New districts, new highways and newly serviced land have come to embody progress, speed […]
Why Friction Matters in the Future of Urban Life The modern city is obsessed with comfort. Climate-controlled interiors, frictionless mobility, seamless services, ever more space per person, and an urban realm designed to remove inconvenience before it is even noticed. Comfort has become the unspoken benchmark of progress. A good city, we are told, is […]
What unites and separates those who plan cities across the world The great blessing – and sometimes curse – of a globally operating business is that I get the chance to work with urban planners from 20 different countries every single day. You can learn a lot about urban planning when interacting with these great […]
Revisiting Doxiadis Through a Book and the Reality of Riyadh This reflection begins with a Christmas present. A book I had been looking for for quite some time, and one that is no longer easy to find: a collection of Constantinos A. Doxiadis’ texts, design drawings, and settlement studies, now largely confined to antique bookstores […]
For more than thirty years, China’s property sector functioned not merely as an economic engine but as a governing mechanism. Housing construction stabilized local finances, absorbed surplus capital, and provided a visible expression of national progress. Developers became key executors of this system, operating at the intersection of state policy, financial markets, and social expectation. […]
What Happens When Your Car Isn’t Under Your Bedroom I own cars in several cities where I live. That is a confession many urbanists are expected to preface with an apology. I will not. I use cars—for what they are good at. I use them to leave the city or to transport big or heavy […]
How snow, sabotage, and sudden silence expose the fragile systems behind urban life—and why moments of failure may be our best guide to building resilient cities A few centimeters of snow were enough to bring parts of the Netherlands to a standstill. Trains halted, roads clogged, daily routines unraveled. In Berlin, thousands of households recently […]
Tallinn does not announce itself. It does not rehearse its virtues or choreograph your admiration. You discover it slowly, almost accidentally, and then—somewhere between the sea and the forest, between a medieval alley and a concrete courtyard—you realize that the city has been making its case all along, simply by functioning well. This is not […]
How migration politics is drifting away from urban reality—and what that means for policy and design Cities are being asked to solve problems they did not create—and are denied the tools to address. Across much of the Western world, national governments are tightening immigration rules. Thresholds go up. Pathways narrow. Temporary visas are capped or […]
Quantum computing promises a revolution in data processing, not simply by accelerating calculation, but by introducing a fundamentally different logic of reasoning. Quantum systems do not proceed step by step along a single path; they exist in superposition, explore many possibilities simultaneously, and collapse into a state only when observed. If this mode of thinking […]
I came across a recent UN-Habitat post on LinkedIn while scrolling past the usual mix of conference photos, policy announcements, and well-meaning advocacy graphics. This one stopped me. A clean blue background, a series of urgent urban problems—high energy bills, poor air quality, social exclusion, disaster risk—and a single answer repeated again and again: Build […]
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. These temporary transformations remind us that light—often treated merely as infrastructure—is one of the most powerful tools we have to shape urban life. It creates atmosphere, […]
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 by borrowing the apparatus of the sciences. This pursuit of epistemic certainty—through diagrams, methodologies, metrics, and procedural forms of “research”—gave architecture an aura of rigour without […]
Every year, as the calendar edges toward its close, a familiar ritual unfolds: the publication of global city rankings. Newspapers and magazines summarize which cities have climbed toward urban perfection and which have slipped down the ladder. The cycle is predictable, but its meaning is far less so. These rankings claim to distil the complexity […]
There is a curious synchrony to grief on social media. Frank Gehry dies, and suddenly the global architectural profession appears to have been assembled in the same room over several decades, all standing in front of the same cardboard-and-balsa model. The photographs bloom across feeds with touching regularity. The junior architect—now a partner, professor, or […]
The 61st ISOCARP World Planning Congress has come to a close. Time to reflect. What lingered with me was not the polished diagrams or the neat vocabulary of resilience and quality of life, but the quiet moments when familiar assumptions cracked open. In the corridors, after sessions, in the pauses between arguments, it became clear […]
Urbanization today is a test not only of infrastructure but of institutional strength, professional competence, and societal readiness. Cities grow ever more complex, their challenges more interconnected, and their futures more uncertain. Around the world, governments have learned—sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully—that the ability to plan well is one of the most strategic national assets of […]
Urban planning is often described as a technical discipline, a creative endeavour, and a guardian of long-term societal interests. Yet decisions about cities ultimately rest in the hands of politicians—people who operate under fundamentally different incentives, time horizons, and pressures. The result is a persistent tension: planners propose well-reasoned solutions, yet political decision makers are […]
A celebratory – and not entirely serious – reflection for the 61st ISOCARP World Planning Congress Every year (or in ISOCARP’s case, for the 61st time), planners from around the world gather in a single location to engage in that ancient ritual known as the congress. Nobody really remembers who invented the congress, but experts […]
As artificial intelligence grows more capable by the month, societies everywhere are wrestling with a question that feels both futuristic and strangely ancient: what will be left for human beings to do when machines can do almost everything? The anxiety is understandable. AI can now write better than many writers, diagnose diseases more accurately than […]
Cityscape Global 2025 in Riyadh felt different this year — not less ambitious, not less glittering, but certainly more grounded. Gone were some of the ultra-shiny NEOM mega-models that in past years commanded the exhibition floor like visiting royalty. NEOM was present, of course, but more quietly so, like a celebrity deciding, for once, not […]
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 while no one bothered to learn its name. It is the city behind the cities, the industrial heartbeat of the Pearl River Delta, an urban […]
If Hong Kong is the city that invented tomorrow, Shenzhen is the one that looked at tomorrow’s blueprints, said “Hold my tea,” and went ahead to build it by next Tuesday. A fishing village turned megacity in less than half a lifetime, Shenzhen is the world’s most convincing argument that cities don’t evolve—they download updates. […]
I love Hong Kong and to me, it has always felt like a place that accidentally time-traveled ahead of the rest of us. While other cities were still arguing about high-rise or discovering what the 15-Minute City means, Hong Kong was already living in a world of hyper-dense skyscrapers, instantaneous public transport, and escalators long […]
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 afterthought, a roof improvised from the cheapest solution available that year. The windows don’t align, the colours argue with each other, and yet somehow, it all […]
When Airbnb launched in 2008, it promised something disarmingly simple: to connect travelers with locals willing to share their homes. It was part of the hopeful dawn of the “sharing economy,” a movement that would make cities more open, affordable, and connected. For a brief moment, it worked. The idea was brilliant: use existing resources […]
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 optimisme, vertrouwen en vooruitgang – een geloof dat Nederland opnieuw richting kan geven aan de toekomst in plaats van er slechts op te reageren – kortom, […]
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 planners worldwide. It promises healthier lifestyles, thriving local economies, and the end of our toxic romance with the car. It’s neat, human-scaled, and morally satisfying — […]
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 spend decades in the company of architects and art historians, admired for their precision and harmlessness. Stadtbild is one of those well-behaved German compounds — Stadt […]
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. They were engines of trade and finance, magnets for migration, and symbols of openness. A select few—New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore—rose to the status […]
An interpretive essay on the performative linguistics of contemporary planning practice Decoding the Dialect of Planning Urban planning is, among many things, a language. A curious mix of optimism, abstraction, and PowerPoint. Over the years, we’ve developed a vocabulary so rich in nuance — and so poor in meaning — that it deserves its own […]
Riyadh’s is rapidly expanding – in population and urbanized area. The Decision: Growth Riyadh announced that it was lifting the suspension on 33.24 square kilometres of land in the west of the capital to achieve several goals at the same time: balance in the real estate market, support for sustainable development, and a “distinctive urban […]
Riyadh’s ambitious municipal reform offers a rare chance to move beyond mega-projects. The city’s future depends on whether new districts and Madinty offices become engines of urban quality, not just administrative shells. Riyadh is a city of speed and spectacle. Over recent decades, it has grown at a scale few global capitals can match. Highways […]
In the vast circus of urban marketing, nothing says exclusivity quite like a definite article. Forget affordability, forget inclusivity — all you need is The. “The Edge.” – “The One.” – “The Terraces.” – “The Rock.” One almost expects God Himself to descend from the clouds and cut the ribbon. Instead, it’s usually a developer […]
The Seduction of Form Cities have always had a love affair with appearances. From the grand boulevards of Haussmann’s Paris to the neoclassical dreamscapes of the City Beautiful movement in Chicago, planners have often believed that beauty leads to order, and that order leads to better lives. Form-based codes are a modern expression of this […]
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 miracle, Soviet boulevards, and glass bridges that look as if they landed here from another galaxy. For an urban planner, walking through the Georgian capital is […]
On a Saturday morning in the Netherlands, the story of public space reveals itself in the most ordinary of places. A square fills with the clatter of market stalls being set up; crates of cheese and fish are stacked high, while children weave between them on scooters. Cyclists cut diagonally across the scene, unfazed by […]
Saudi Arabia is building at a pace and scale the world has rarely seen. Across its deserts and coastlines, extraordinary visions rise: NEOM’s The Line, a 170-kilometer-long city of glass; Qiddiya, an entertainment and sports capital larger than some countries; the revival of historic Diriyah; the futuristic Jeddah Central waterfront; and King Salman Park, set […]
On September 10, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman openly admitted that Saudi Arabia’s housing prices had risen to “unacceptable levels.” It was a strikingly candid statement from a leader steering one of the world’s most ambitious urban transformations. Saudi Arabia is pouring billions into megaprojects, opening its economy, and preparing to let foreign buyers enter […]
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 promised connection now splinters reality into weaponized echo chambers. Every morning we wake up to news we deemed straight out of a bad Hollywood movie, only […]
Gaza, Reimagined as an Asset Class Gaza’s rubble isn’t a tragedy in this plan—it’s a business opportunity. The GREAT Trust masterplan treats the destruction of an entire society as a blank slate for profit, promising investors a tenfold return while Palestinians are shuffled, surveilled, or shipped off. This isn’t urban planning; it’s venture capital with […]
Last week, travelling through Finland, I followed the footsteps of Alvar Aalto. From Helsinki to Rovaniemi, from Turku to Jyväskylä, I visited his sanatoria, civic centres, libraries, and houses. The trip was more than architectural sightseeing – it was a living lesson in how buildings can transcend their role as objects and become nuclei 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 few tense hours. Over a hundred nations had arrived with a shared ambition: to impose binding limits on the production of plastics and the toxic chemicals […]
Greetings from Riyadh! It is 47°C outside, the asphalt shimmers, bus stops empty, and even a short trip on foot feels unreasonable. It’s tempting to declare the walkability debate moot the moment the mercury spikes. But doing so would miss two truths: first, extreme heat has serious, manageable health risks that demand better urban design; […]
For too long, politicians and planners have ignored or sugarcoated the housing crisis—with dramatic consequences. Not only have mainstream parties been punished for neglecting one of the most pressing social issues of our time, but they have also fueled the rise of political extremism on both the right and the left. It’s time for change.Here […]
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 countryside and city, over mountains and cobbles, transforming the French landscape into a live arena of endurance and drama. But beyond the spectacle of speed and […]
At city planning offices around the world, weary urban planners turn to AI tools to help draft a zoning report. They feed it background documents and ask for a summary of policy options. Within seconds, the algorithm produces a coherent draft. “It makes me more efficient and I can return something to clients much quicker,” […]
Germany’s housing market has long stood at the intersection of economic stability and social equity. In recent years, however, a growing crisis—marked by soaring rents, a stagnating construction sector, and increasing homelessness—has forced the government to take bold steps. Enter the “Wohnungsturbo” or “housing turbo,” a suite of measures proposed and promoted by the Scholz […]
The Hague has collapsed. Again. And while the Dutch may pride themselves on consensus politics and steady coalitions, this latest implosion—sparked by the populist hissy-fit of Geert Wilders—is not just another footnote in the lowlands’ long tradition of polder-model paralysis. It might just be the best thing that’s happened to Dutch cities in years. Because […]
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. Sustainability has become the holy grail of modern construction, a shimmering badge of moral superiority that architects and developers wave like eco-crusaders in hard hats. But […]
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 entire lowlands. While in the cities I departed from, you could walk a kilometre and not see even a cigarette bud or a candy wrapper on […]
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 — promised to revolutionize how humans live, work, and move. Its pitch sounds seductive: zero cars, zero streets, zero carbon emissions. Just two mirrored walls slicing […]
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 and Jeddah already reaching up to 63°C during summer months, projections indicate that the Kingdom could face average increases of up to 4°C by the end […]
Alert: Unlike what many claim, it is not the end of consultancy! Broken Promises in the Land of Vision Saudi Arabia has long been a magnet for the world’s most prestigious consulting firms. Eager to ride the wave of Vision 2030—a $3 trillion economic transformation plan—the likes of McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Company, and the […]
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, it stands at a strange crossroads — more powerful than ever, yet unsure of what kind of future to grow into. The city’s problems are visible […]
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 cried. The job was a dream — but rent for a one-bedroom flat would eat nearly 70% of her pay cheque. To make it work, Noor […]
by a European Urban Planner Practicing on the Arab Peninsula I arrived in Saudi Arabia with a well-worn European planner’s toolkit—deep respect for history, a belief in incremental progress, and a quiet confidence in process over speed. While that had been questioned by previous work in South-East Asia, like many of my colleagues back home, […]
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 sea of orange. Streets fill with music, markets, and millions of people dressed in the national colour to celebrate King’s Day – or Koningsdag – the […]
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 enforced by predictive algorithms. Imagine a city that seems to think—one where technology quietly orchestrates daily life for peak efficiency and ease. It’s a vision born […]
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. Framed as a universal call to action, they quickly gained traction among governments, development agencies, and cities worldwide. Of particular interest to urban planners and policymakers […]
When most people hear about artificial intelligence reshaping cities, their minds leap to sci-fi visuals: robot traffic controllers, AI-designed skyscrapers, or virtual reality planning simulations. Those headlines are eye-catching, but beneath the surface of flashy renderings and automated building permits, something more subtle—and more transformative—is happening. Across the world, AI is beginning to influence the […]
Lately, I came across a data set on OurWorldinData.org that was mapping the projected urbanization increases between now and 2050. It made me uncomfortable when comparing where most urban planners and designers work and where most of the growth will take place. According to that data, Niger will urbanize by another 248 %, Tanzania by […]
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 that voted for him, but also young urban and suburban folks. Admittedly, not all of them, but enough to pave a populist’s way into the White […]
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 objectives, a vibrant society, a thriving economy and an ambitious nation and 13 related implementation programs, this can become one of the most profound and consequential […]
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 feet to go everywhere changes the perspective on space – urban public space in particular. The public and open space in most places we passed through […]
This week, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of this year’s serpentine pavilion by Korean Architect Minsuk Cho of Mass Studies. It was a beautiful event with the expected crowd to turn up – starchitects and wannabe stars, friends of the author and their friends, culture scene aficionados and not to forget, the […]
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 have green number plates, while the traditional blue ones are for fossil fuel vehicles. 20 % or around 800,000 of the city’s 3.9 million cars have […]
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. Of its intended 170 kilometres, for now, only a first phase of a few thousand meters will be realized. The Line has become a mere dash, […]
Since more than twenty years, I am regularly coming to China. Ever since I went there for the first time, there have been talks that the real estate bubble will have to bust anytime soon. Partially this misjudgement of both, locals and foreign experts was rooted in the sheer scale of the economic development 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 have already reached beyond 50 degrees. What sounds like just a bit hotter than before actually is much worse: from certain temperatures even the healthiest people […]
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 in city planning in the 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century. Like no other colleague, he has put his focus on what was back […]
The world is part baffled, part outright dismissive of the projects that are all over the media. They present an urban vision that starkly contrasts with conventional expectations, challenging preconceived notions of a nation by many still perceived as a Middle Age kingdom reliant solely on oil. These shiny urban wonderlands embrace an idea of […]
Het maakt niet uit waar je tegenwoordig heen gaat, Amsterdam, Parijs, Berlijn of Lissabon, overal staat het gebrek aan woningen en de onbetaalbaarheid daarvan hoog op de agenda. In Nederland worden platformen, werkgroepen, taskforces, clubjes, gezelschappen, dialoogtafels opgericht – welke vorm het samenbrengen van mensen je maar kan verzinnen – om ‘oplossingen te bedenken’. Deze […]
Laat ik bekennen, ik ben een liefhebber van Vlaamse hedendaagse architectuur. De culturele relevantie ervan werd 20 jaar geleden al erkend met de oprichting van het Vlaams Architectuurinstituut en ze heeft me altijd geïntrigeerd met een soliditeit en ruimtelijke rijkdom, zonder de bling-bling die elders wel nodig blijkt te zijn. Dit heeft het beruchte ‘lelijke […]
Rediscovering urban China after Covid Since more than 20 years I have been travelling to China several times a year. In this time I have seen the country developing – a miracle happening in front of my eyes. The Covid epidemic put an abrupt end to this experience. For three years I have not been […]
I am not a Dutch citizen, and therefore I am not allowed to vote in the Netherlands – unfortunately. I am also not allowed to vote anymore in Germany because I left the country too long ago, but that is a different story and whether I voted or not, I have been living in this […]
It does not matter where you go these days. Everywhere, the lack of housing and the un-affordability are high up on the agenda. Platforms, workgroups, task forces, communities, societies, dialogues – about any form of bringing people together is being used to ‘deal with it’. These initiatives write policy advises, white papers, guidelines, rule books, […]
Last week, a court in Barcelona rules that the city’s super block program is unlawful. The response was immediate. Many blamed ‘dirty games’, a battle between political parties and the incompetence of the judge to be responsible for the loss of the lovechild of many urbanists in the city and beyond. Doom scenarios were painted […]
Recently, Germany has been discussing new standards for the size of parking spaces. The reason: the old ones do not leave enough space for the most popular products of the country’s prime industry – Sports Utility Vehicles – short SUVs. Of course, I could now dedicate an entire 4-minute read to the consequences of the […]
INBOX: “Results of the design competition ABD in XYZ”. This or similar is the email subject many of us are waiting and hoping for. Usually it is marking the end of a draining process that typically lasts for nine months. And more often than not, it does not end happy. If you are lucky, then […]
Recently I came across an article in Nature magazine about the annual global consumption of concrete. Worldwide, we use about 30 billion tons of concrete[i] every year. That comes down to 12.900.000.000 cubic meters[ii] of concrete. Just to get a feeling how much that is: If all that sand-cement mix was poured into a lake, […]
‘Modern Architecture, a planetary warming story’ is the title of a book by architecture historian Hans Ibelings published recently. In his text, Ibelings builds evidence that modernist architecture is closely linked and therefore partially responsible for global warming. This publication is only one in a row that try to paint modernist architecture as the root […]
A bit more than a year ago, the German term ‘Zeitenwende’ – watershed moment – was frequently used to describe the Russian attack and the war unfolding in Ukraine. What we have been seeing since has brought about a new world order and a change in thinking. While many of us – including myself – […]
by Markus Appenzeller and Thijs Spaandonk This Manifesto emerges from, and reflects on, a series of talks by a diverse group of climate specialists and students that Thijs van Spaandonk and Markus Appenzeller, as heads of Urban Design at the Academies of Architecture in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, organized in the spring of 2021 under the […]
Recently, I came across a lecture of Le Corbusier. In his short talk, he explains the principles of modernism on a chalk board – good old style. What struck me was the attitude he showed. He presented as if he was explaining basic natural laws – results of scientific research. In his explanation, modernism sounded […]
Did you ever hear of quantum computers, and do you know how they work? Yes – great, then you can skip this paragraph. If not – here is a little explanation: Normal – binary computers know two stages: on or off. In their microchips millions of transistors do exactly that – they switch on or […]
It definitely was a grand opening – the Ministerie van Maak’s exhibition at Ferrodome in Rotterdam. It reminded me of the techno temples of the 90s in Berlin – big, dark, a lot of people and some odd things happening. The only thing missing was the doorman, filtering ‘in crowd’ from the rest. If it […]
When discussing climate change, we – Architects and Urbanists – most of the time talk about materials that should be less carbon intensive, and we talk about processes that need to be more environmentally friendly and inclusive. That these conversations happen and that more and more often actions are the result is a good thing, […]
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 can question the accuracy of this number and the methods used to arrive at it. Research from the University of Cambridge showed that these estimates are […]
It is a well known fact: Globally, cities are growing, and they will keep growing in the decades to come. The other – less known fact is, that growth of cities is focussed on international, national or regional centres. Many cities that fall outside this category are either stagnant or shrinking. The same goes for […]
The war in Ukraine and the Russian aggression are still continuing and most likely that will not change in the foreseeable future. It is horrifying to see this useless destruction and the deaths and tragedy this inflicts on the innocent citizens of a peace loving country and its cities. The residents of Mariupol, Kyiv or […]
I really like the German term ‘Zeitenwende’ that can be translated as turning point but with the connotation that radical, fundamental changes are happening. On Thursday this Zeitenwende took place with the attack of Russia on Ukraine. We do not know how this conflict will be resolved but we can say for sure, that it […]
It seems that everywhere in the world, billboards along motorways, in public transport or glossy lifestyle magazines do not advertise only perfumes, mobile phones, cars or fashion anymore. A couple of years ago, they were taken over by advertisements for architecture – usually not particularly beautiful or unique. Did architecture in the meantime become another […]
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 believed that technology and spatial design can make it possible. They created three-dimensional infrastructural systems to support human life virtually everywhere. A mini version of earth […]
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 decorated output. Loos’ insights paved the way for modernist thinking and the elimination of decoration in architecture for the benefit of visual simplicity. Merged with the […]
Flight shaming has become a new sport among those wanting to change the world for the better. In their eyes everyone who boards a plane is indifferent to climate change and does not want to change habits. In the past I flew a lot and in the last one and a half years only once. […]
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 what the mainstream of our professions will be focussing on in 10 or 15 years. Today, when reviewing graduation proposals, I discovered something that irritates me. […]
It seems to be the time of doom scenarios again. Last month, the IPCC report on climate change was published, picturing a dramatic outlook. Climate change and the associated risks are accelerating, and a number of points of no return might come earlier than assumed so far. But it neither is a surprise, nor does […]
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 biggest natural reserves, the National Park Hoge Veluwe. I indeed saw a lot of natural beauty and wildlife. But what I also saw was less amazing […]
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 architecture there are few words that better reflect what it really is we are doing. The desire to be radical is constantly undermined by about any […]
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 cities like Tokyo or Seoul and you have cities like Jakarta, Rangoon or Dhaka. In America, you have cities like New York or Vancouver and you […]
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 either welcomed or questioned or rejected by different parties – depending on how their interests were affected. Bouwend Nederland, the representation of the building industry, welcomed […]
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 more than two or three days in advance is burdened with a substantial margin of error. Even quantitative predictions – the long term climatic changes – […]
Recently a new book came out titled “The Good Ancestor”. Author: British Philosopher Roman Krznaric. In his book he makes a case for saving the planet. His suggestions: we need to behave in such a way, that our grand and grand-grandchildren think positive about us. He supports this with numerous examples of the effects that […]
Recently, world leaders have engaged in a competition of who makes the bigger pledges when it comes to reaching climate neutrality for the respective country or world region they represent. We should welcome this since it seems global politics on the highest levels finally have understood that no more and no less is at stake […]
European cities are three-dimensional spatial constructs. But if we look at the plans we make, then the third dimension is strangely absent. Apart from the definition of building heights and some aesthetic design codes, there is little in our planning vocabulary that embraces the third dimension. Consequently, the discussion then also is if one should […]
The definition of cities often swirls around the complex overlay of systems that together form the urban fabric. In this logic transport networks, utilities, buildings, people, open spaces and ultimately every tree form part of that system. The operation system – in a way the system of systems – is out capitalist economic model. Everything […]
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: ‘Let’s plant trees!’ We all have become obsessed by tree planting – so obsessed, that we draw them on facades of buildings, on every rooftop and […]
The current narrative of climate change is that of an inevitable development as a result of human progress that we can fix. Depending on the angle, the fixes can be found in technical solutions, entirely new technologies, policy changes, adjustments to our economic model or simply turning the radiator thermostat to a lower level. While […]
It is odd: Whenever architects show pictures of climate adapted buildings they first tend to pick the igloo, the mountain hut in Switzerland or the wind catchers and the mud architecture of Iran. Or they pick high tech examples with all sorts of technical gadgetry or – to mainly render it green – trees on […]
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 cycles. We have moves us in a defining role that goes way beyond the naming of an epoch. In a way that we have such a […]
BEYOND PEAK INDIFFERENCE #3 – Water is the currency of climate change. Increasing global temperatures heavily affect the global water circulation cycles. More heat means more evaporation, leading to more draught in one place and more extreme weather events in another. More heat leads to more ice melting more quickly causing river floods and rising […]
BEYOND PEAK INDIFFERENCE #2 – In the last 250 years since the start of the industrial revolution, mankind has doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. More than half of this was added by us in the last 50 years. The Paris climate agreement seeks to limit our impact on the climate. But the […]
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 designers, these talks are between designers and sociologists, economists, scientists, lawyers and activists. BEYOND PEAK INDIFFERENCE is a series of reflections on these conversations and an […]
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, Barcelona” – sometimes “Rome or London”. Only “New York, Vancouver and Tokyo” can ‘pollute’ the otherwise Eurocentric global charts of favourite places. And – global rankings […]
According to a felt 99% of all scientists the impact of humans on the global climate is a fact. An inconvenient truth that is responsible for the climate change we are seeing already, and that we will keep seeing to a much bigger extent in the decades and centuries to come. The CO2 that we […]
Over Christmas the architectural world was rocked by the plans to demolish Louis Kahn’s dormitories of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. How is it possible that even making plans to do this is discussible? I am a big fan of Kahn’s work, therefore it hit me as hard as many other lovers of his […]
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, that the future disappeared in a big virus. Any long term and not so long-term plan was subject to the ever-changing catalogue of covid measures that […]
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 a city their home. So far so good, but what does city or urban area mean. Even the UN states that there is no global definition, […]
Last week I stumbled across a headline in Dutch media. The ‘Partij voor de Dieren’ (Animal rights party) proposed to reduce agricultural land for farming to build 75.000 new homes. Two weeks earlier a debate took place where the Christian Democrats were upset about the City of Utrecht’s plans not to build new homes outside […]
In July this year, the online portal ‘common edge’ asked: “Does architecture have a “fake news” problem?” In their article they make a case against the growing compartmentalization of architecture online portals resulting in the disappearance of all projects that do not meet the stylistic requirements of that very publication. With that approach, they state, […]
There used to be a time when Corona was a clear indicator of informality. I am talking about the beer brand, available in every other bar, restaurant, and outdoor terrace on earth. While Corona has become mainstream, 10 years ago it was available in the places where the young, the hip, the creative tended to […]
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 that should not hide the fact that America is more divided than ever before. What was remarkable was that the uncertainty of the outcome made the […]
This week, a quote of me was posted on Instagram: “Good urbanism is about making cities for humans in balance with nature”. I was happy with it – and I still am. But the comment of a colleague, asking what about places where humans are not in balance with nature, made me reread it and […]
Yesterday I stumbled across a post of Nico Rosberg on Linkedin. There for former formula 1 world champion announced the starting of Rosberg Xtreme Racing. With his team he will participate in the Extreme E series, a kind of rally series but then with electric vehicles. It is the declared mission of the series to […]
City development is deeply intertwined with the economic and political system it happens in. It translates into how space is used, how infrastructure is provided and what role individuals play in the process of making city. Cities therefore are a living witness of political systems and associated economic models. American style suburbia is not imaginable […]
Judging the words of pretty much every company, every city mayor and every architect and urbanist, dealing with climate change is at the heart of each and every decision they make. Enterprises develop extensive and colourful marketing campaigns, showing their leadership in fighting global warming. They hire celebrities to hammer their message home and they […]
In 1969, Richard Buckminster Fuller published his book Operation Manual to Spaceship Earth. It was at this moment that mankind landed on the moon and when it seemed like it would only be a matter of years before humans became a multi-planetary species. But it was also the moment when the fragility of spaceship earth […]
It keeps coming back: the populist and liberal demand that cities should extend at their edges since people want to live in a green and affordable environment. Covid-19 comes handy as a support for this argument since many of us are currently mostly confined to our home. It seems that a patch of ground around […]
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 sustainable has a career from describing a cutting edge attitude towards our role and our actions in relation to the environment to a marketing label that […]
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 persistent over the last decade where people moved to urban locations. While there is no evidence that the virus poses bigger risks in urban areas, this […]
Today I gave an online lecture about the agglomeration of Saratov in Russia. When invited I thought – nice! Making a case for strengthening cities in the region and reduce the load on the central city. With further research I realized that there are barely any cities around. Of course that does not come as […]
Covid-19 makes it evidently clear: What happens in Wuhan affects what happens in New York, and what happens in Milan has an impact on what happens in Shanghai. This is not new, but the dimension and the speed with which the effects take place has vastly accelerated in recent decades. Alone, the world has been […]
Yesterday the results of the international ideas competition for Berlin and Brandenburg 2070 was announced. The competition was explicitly branded as a tool to develop a future vision of Berlin and its surrounding Brandenburg. It was also meant as an event that maps out the future of the metropolis which this year celebrates its 100th […]
In January 2020, ANP – the Dutch Press Office reported that again more retail space is standing empty. This is a trend that has been going on since several years now. What is more interesting is, that the increase is not mainly by the bankruptcy of one of the big department store chains but because […]
Learning and teaching in new world. Like many other schools, the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture had to switch its teaching and learning to online environments. In the beginning we – and with us many others – thought that online teaching is the same as offline teaching with a piece of technology in between. We were […]
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 public space. Culture, religion, politics and social and economic consideration have been the forces that shaped the public realm. This has led to amazing squares, streets, […]
Last week the City of Rotterdam proudly presented its newest plans to pour 223 million Euros into greening seven important places in the city. Among them are Schouwburgplein, the iconic place designed by West8 at the pinnacle of what became known as ‘Superdutch’ in the 1990’s and Hofplein, the iconic, yet not very attractive roundabout […]
This week, Vinkham Mansharani, a Harvard researcher, published a book, titled “Think for yourself”. It emphasizes the need for generalists – people that know a lot about many things in a world where education, professional environments and even politics become more specialised. One might argue that in a world where the amount of knowledge has […]
In 2018 I organized a study trip to Moscow with students from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. They all felt it was an adventure and all of them had imagery of Moscow in the back of their minds that for a long time have shaped the international image of the city – grey, big and […]
Ein Interview mit Markus Appenzeller im Berliner Tagesspiegel geführt durch Christian Hönike. Herr Appenzeller, Sie sind mit Ihrem Planungsbüro in Städten weltweit aktiv. Sind wir Berliner besonders von der Wohnungsnot betroffen? Nein, das ist ein globales Problem. Überall, wo ich hinkomme, ob in China, in Afrika oder in Europa, gibt es kaum noch bezahlbaren Wohnraum in […]
Until a couple of weeks ago, Italy was dominating the news as one of the countries hit hardest by Covid19. We all saw dreadful pictures of overcrowded hospitals and doctors fighting for the lives of their patients until complete exhaustion. Luckily in the meantime the situation has drastically improved. And yet again, Italy is in […]
Unlike a war and unlike a terrorist attack, a virus does not destroy buildings, streets or infrastructure and it also does not use explosives. It affects the city in a whole different way. It does not come as a surprise, that Urbanists have been quick in outlining what the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will […]
