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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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,...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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....
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
‘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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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 –...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
