Maarten Hajer, one of the best-known urban planners in the Netherlands, now holds the Chair in Public Policy at the University of Amsterdam. His landmark work, The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Clarendon Press, 1995), was followed by Living with Nature – Environmental Discourse as Cultural Politics (Oxford University Press, 1999). His new book, co-written with Arnold Reijndorp, is In Search of New Public Domain (Nai Publishers, 2002).

Recent articles

The Dutch urban planner and political scientist Maarten Hajer wrote the pioneering work in environmental theory, ‘The Politics of Environmental Discourse’ (1995). His and Arnold Reijndorp’s new book, In Search of New Public Domain, is likely to offend many traditional landscape sensibilities (perhaps especially in the UK, the land that modernity forgot) – for Hajer finds not only virtue, but occasionally beauty, in the new public spaces of the 21st century: airports, shopping malls, theme parks and popular festivals. Here he asks some searching questions about the social and civic importance of these new landscapes.