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Prof. dr. Maarten Hajer

Vening Meineszgebouw A
Princetonlaan 8a
Kamer 1.02
3584 CB Utrecht

Prof. dr. Maarten Hajer

Hoogleraar
Geowetenschappen
030 253 5426
m.a.hajer@uu.nl

“It is time to admit environmental politics 'as we know it' cannot deliver. It is time for a new, more cultural approach to environmental politics which could have more leverage on the societal imagination.”
 

Maarten A. Hajer (1962) is distinguished professor Urban Futures and Futuring and Director of the Urban Futures Studio. Previously Hajer was professor of Public Policy at the ľϸӰ of Amsterdam (1998-2015) and Director-General of the PBL – Netherlands Environmental Asssessment Agency (2008-2015). Hajer holds MA degrees in Political Science and in Urban and Regional Planning (both ľϸӰ of Amsterdam) and got his D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford ľϸӰ.

 

He is the author of many scholarly books and articles, including The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Oxford UP, 1995), In Search of New Public Domain – Analysis and Strategy (NAi Publishers, 2001, together with Arnold Reijndorp), Deliberative Policy Analysis (Cambridge UP, 2003, eds. with Hendrik Wagenaar), Strong Stories – How the Dutch Reinvent their Planning Practice (Nai/010, 2010, with Suzanne van ‘t Klooster & Jantine Grijzen), Authoritative Governance - Policy-making in the Age of Mediatization (Oxford UP, 2009) and Smart about Cities – Visualizing the Challenge of 21st Century Urbanism (NAi/010, 2014), a critique of the prevalent discourse of smart cities and a call to connect new technological possibilities to a more encompassing agenda: the need to change the 'metabolism' of our cities. In Neighbourhoods for the Future - A Plea for a Social and Ecological Urbanism, Hajer and colleagues argued that neighbourhood development could be the crucial point of intervention to combine the fight against climate change with the importance to connect to the human scale (with Edwin Buitelaar, Chris ten Dam, Martijn van der Hurk and Peter Pelzer). The attractively designed book was published by Trancity/Valiz in the Fall of 2020 and was reprinted in 2022 and 2025. His new book Captured Futures - Rethining the Drama of Environmental Politics, written together with Jeroen Oomen, was published by Oxford ľϸӰ Press in 2025. 

 

Maarten Hajer is also well known as curator and government advisor. He was Chief-Curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) 2016 the results of which can be found . In 2018 Hajer was the curator of an exhibition on the future of the Netherlands, , part of Leeuwarden/Fryslân Culturele Hoofdstad 2018 together with Michiel van Iersel. Hajer was elected Government Manager of the Year in 2014. He was a member of UNEP's (IRP) from 2010 until he stepped down in 2025. For the IRP he co-chaired the working group on Cities (together with Mark Swilling). Their report The Weight of Cities - Resource Requirements of Future Urbanisation, can be found He is research fellow of the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch ľϸӰ, South Africa. From 2016 to 2024 Maarten was the Scientific Director of the university-wide strategic theme 'Pathways to Sustainability' and the lead author of its new programme, 'The Way Forward' (2021).

If you want to find out more about the work on futuring of the Urban Futures Studio, do consider visiting our website, where you can browse almost endlessly through all our project in the past, the present, and indeed in the future.

 

Key words
Cities, Discourse & Dramaturgy, Techniques of Futuring, Deliberative Governance, Politics as Performance, Futuring for Sustainability.

 

Leeropdracht
Urban Futures and Futuring
Oratiedatum
17-03-2017