Willem Salet

Willem Salet is professor emeritus Urban Planning, at the department of Planning, Geography and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). He chaired Urban Planning from 1998 to 2017. He was the Scientific Director of the Amsterdam study center for the Metropolitan Environment AME (2008-2013). He was the President of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) 2008-2010 and was awarded AESOP Honorary Membership in 2016.

Willem Salet engages with a number of international planning researchers in a "Turn to Institutions in Action". It is a mission that explores the dialectic between institutional planning approaches and a pragmatic orientation of public action. Two recent book publications are key in this trajectory:

• Salet, W. (2018). Public Norms and Aspirations: The Turn to Institutions in Action. [Hardback: 9781138084957 pub: 2018-03-13]. eBook 9781315111599 pub: 2018-03-05.

• Salet, W. (ed.) (2018 in press). The Routledge Handbook of Institutions and Planning in Action. New York: Routledge [Hardback: 9781138085732 pub. 2018-06-26]

E-mail address: w.g.m.salet@uva.nl

Webpage:

University of Amsterdam: http://www.uva.nl/en/profile/s/a/w.g.m.salet/w.g.m.salet.html

Centre for Urban Studies: http://urbanstudies.uva.nl/people/research-staff.html

As a sociologist and urban planner, Willem Salet specializes in the institutional aspects of changing city-regions. Institutions are perceived in sociological sense as the patterning of public norms. He investigates the cultural, legal and political aspects of public norms in the making of sustainable city-regions. Salet coordinated a number of international studies about urban transition, urban governance and strategic urban projects. This research includes (with Andy Thornley and Anton Kreukels (2003) Metropolitan Governance and Spatial Planning; Comparative Case Studies of European City-regions (London, Routledge); with Enrico Gualini (2007), Framing Strategic Urban Projects: Learning from experiences in Europe (London, Routledge); with Federico Savini (2016) focusing on the political dimension of institutions: Planning Projects in Transition: Interventions, Regulations and Investments (Berlin, Jovis). Further research explored the cultural dimension of institutions (with Sebastian Dembski). With Marleen van Rijswick, Jochem de Vries and other colleagues, he investigated the contextualization of law and regulation. One of the current research projects conducts a global exploration of the Right to Build (with Camilla d’Ottaviano, Stan Majoor, Suzana Pasternak & Daan Bosschuyt in cooperation with European, Latin-American and African researchers.