All throughout my career I’ve had a strong belief that a better world is possible if we put our minds and hearts to it. I’ve honed my craft, design, to enable me to put this belief into action. My role and responsibility lies in helping groups of people from varying backgrounds untangle complex systemic challenges, imagine better realities, shape a shared vision that brings energy and focus, create tangible manifestations of this vision, and scale these manifestations into implemented new solutions. My craft brings understanding, optimism, focus, creativity, courage, and grit to this process. My expertise brings confidence, problem solving, innovation and business sense.
I mostly work in the context of complex systemic urban challenges that deal with how groups of people live, work, move about, and find sustenance. These challenges are never tackled by one person or one entity alone. And they are never solved tomorrow. For me the complexities, multi stakeholder perspectives and long term agendas are not hurdles to overcome but realities to design with.
The core of my work in these areas lies in a radical, realistic optimism. If I can align groups of people around a shared driving belief, and then help these people imagine new solutions to challenges, and then help them to put these solutions to work for them, it means I’ve taken them on a journey towards improvement. However small these steps may be, they are always worth the effort.
My work always touches on technology and digital solutions but these are never the core of the solution. I look at technology as an enabler and an amazing tool that I understand and know how to use. But it’s very important in my work to not put technology on a pedestal. In the domains where I’m active there is a constant and in my opinion unhealthy flirtation with so called Smart City solutions, the metaverse, data and AI. In most cases these technologies represent a fancy and expensive solution waiting for a problem. In the worst case they attempt to replace, instead of enhance, the power of community, human connectedness, emotion, experience, creativity and hope.
I think what sets me apart from other consultants, designers and innovators in the field is that I don’t focus on the technology but on the interactions and emotions that technology enables; I don’t focus on the objects but on how those objects can become props in meaningful journeys; I don’t focus on the infrastructure but on the drivers and barriers that may make that infrastructure relevant or obsolete; I don’t focus on the data but on the stories and lives of real people behind that data; I don’t focus on the statistically proven ‘facts’ but on the valid and intuitive signs of opportunity, I don’t focus on a city’s assets but on the experiences those assets may unlock.