Spring 1934. In a boggy clay polder south of Amsterdam, the first sods are cut for what would become the largest urban forest in the world: Amsterdamse Bos. Over the next decades, the so-called Boschplan expanded into a unique project. Creating woodland in the polder was a technological tour de force, and Cornelis van Eesteren and Jakoba Mulder’s modern design caused a sensation at home and abroad. Equally unique were the conditions that surrounded the Bos’ birth. Amidst the hardships of ...

Migration is one of the most pressing and complex spatial urban challenges in Europe today. Observing how newcomers, such as labour migrants, refugees, border crossers sans papiers, and asylum seekers are accommodated, we must conclude that at present not a single urban strategy convincingly enables us to receive new arrivals at the heart of our societies and cities. People are being stored in overcrowded refugee settlements on Greek islands, in squalid basement apartments in central Athens, ...