Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
