Commissioned by UN-Habitat and UNDP, an Urban Planning Advisory Team from ISOCARP, with ten international experts and ISOCARP Vice President Martin Dubbeling as head of mission, developed and presented a spatial vision for Gaza and the heartland of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. UN-Habitat and UNDP joined forces to curate and facilitate a spatial visioning exercise between the 6th and the 14th of June 2015. The International Society for City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP), which is an international planning NGO, was commissioned to compose and lead an Urban Planning Advisory Team (UPAT). A team of eleven international and...

Invited by Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University and Ningbo Institute of Planning and Design and the School of Urban Design, Wuhan University a Team of Dutch Experts (TDE) from ISOCARP and the Connecting Cities Network visited Nanjing, Ningbo and Wuhan from 25 May to 3 June 2015, participating “Sino-Dutch Planning Week” in Nanjing and seminars in Ningbo and Wuhan. The “Sino-Dutch Planning Week” in Nanjing University is an important part of “village planning” education programme of the fourth-year bachelor students from urban planning discipline. By involving the Team of Dutch Experts, the planning week was supposed...

For ISOCARP I am responsible for the acquisition and preparation of Urban Planning Advisory Team (UPAT) workshops worldwide. The objective of a UPAT is to mobilize the extensive planning experience and expertise of ISOCARP members in order to help and assist cities and regions with for projects, programmes and policies on spatial planning and urban design. In the week of 15-23 August 2014 I was invited by the UN-Habitat office in Ramallah to prepare a UPAT workshop for an independent Test Planning Exercise for the region between the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jericho. This region, that includes East-Jerusalem, is an underdeveloped...

A team of experts of the ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners, participated in the first and second International Advisory Conferences for the Jiangbei New District on 11-17 August and 27 October-02 November 2013. During the two conferences the experts observed the field conditions in the vast planning area and were briefed about the 2049 Strategy Planning and 2030 Overall Planning for the Jiangbei New District. The ISOCARP experts carefully reviewed the plans, shared their experiences of related international practices, and initiated sketch sessions in which opportunities and threats of the planning area were...

The workshop was hosted by the Shantou Planning Bureau and the Institute of Urban Planning and Design of the Nanjing University. These institutions were awarded with the 2012 ISOCARP Award for Excellence for the integrated strategy and the focus on sustainability and organic transformation as proposed in The Shantou Strategic Development Plan. Shantou is a seaport with 5,5 million inhabitants in the province of Guangdong and a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) since 1980. The five SEZ’s – Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Xiamen and Shantou cities and Hainan Province—represent the most progressive policy for reform and trade. Even with all these...

To the south of Shantou, in Guangdong Province, lies a vast area that can be characterised as a “Desakota” area. A Desakota area is in origin an agricultural area in Asia were the villages (“desa” in Indonesian) and agricultural lands are rapidly changing towards intensive and densely built cities (“kota” in Indonesian) with a mixture of small and larger industries, housing for local inhabitants and immigrant workers. The Shan Nan Desakota Area has a surface area of about 600 km2 and contains an estimated 1,3 million inhabitants. In the process of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation historic and useful structures, such as the delicate...

A team of experts of the ISOCARP, the International Society of City and Regional Planners, participated in an International Advisory Workshop for the Wuhan East Lake Scenic Area on 11-16 March 2012. During that workshop the experts observed the field conditions in the vast planning area and were briefed about the objectives of the Wuhan East Lake Scenic Area. The ISOCARP experts carefully reviewed the plans, shared their experiences of related international practices, and initiated sketch sessions in which opportunities and threats of the planning area were discussed. The Wuhan Planning and Design Institute (WPDI) is a public sector...