Town planning teacher, researcher, practitioner and author. Editor of Planning Practice and Research, Professor Emeritus of Spatial Planning and Strategy and former Head of the Department of Urbanism at TU Delft, visiting professor at South China University School of Architecture and Birmingham City University. Effective spatial planning is critical for creating more sustainable and fair places, but it can also do harm when it is manipulated by powerful forces. I’m interested in planning tools that enable collective decision making and that inject the spatial dimension into sectoral policies. Planners and urbanists benefit from an education that combines the benefits of social science in explaining how places work, the creativity and imagination of design, and an evidence base from urban studies and spatial analysis.I’m grateful for 11 great years with the spatial planning team in Urbanism at TU Delft. I’ve delivered and continue to be involved in cross-national comparative planning projects, and have written well-known texts on town and country planning in the UK and European spatial planning.