2008
As a member of the Stipo team, I work as one of a pair, training project managers from the Binnenmaas municipal authority in the 'project-based approach'. It's fantastic to combine the Stipo approach with your own experience, insight and knowledge, passing it on to, and developing it with, younger people.
2004 - 2008
After retiring, I spend a lot of time in Latin America. During talks, guest lectures and ‘volunteer work' I take a look at whether, and how, the Stipo approach can take root in the culture and reality there. I keep in touch with the Stipo team as a 'conscience'.
2004
My partner's health problems mean we take early retirement. I get the chance to organise a farewell conference, with the title: "The end of the polder model, opportunities for spatial development with a human dimension".
1999 - 2004
I run, or am involved in, various projects at the provincial authority of South Holland: the Rijnmond Regional Plan, ‘Vital Cities', ‘Delta Metropolis'. I initiate and produce ‘Kennisdeler', a contribution to knowledge management in the Province of South Holland.
1995 - 1999
I am the manager of the project for collaboration between the provincial and municipal authorities: ‘Spatial Design of Hoeksche Waard (RIHW)' for identifying and establishing links with community organisations in the area. As a member of the AIR-Southbound programming advisory committee, I get the opportunity to enhance my understanding of the processes and potential of the Hoeksche Waard from new points of view.
1994 - 1995
The provincial authority starts to experiment with its ‘own projects'; I am appointed as the manager of the GS project ‘Agricultural affairs' for establishing new links between the province and the ‘agricultural sector'. I enter a new world where the Stipo approach once again proves to be effective.
1992 - 2002
For the theoretical justification, development and improvement of my work on the Drechtoevers project, I get in touch with my friend Geer Koopmans, who teaches Stipo (Strategic Innovative Spatial Product Development) at the University of Amsterdam. After a year's collaboration, our directors decide to make a straight swap: Geer and I will do each other's job for one day a week. So Geer works as a consultant on my projects, and I give practical lessons at the University of Amsterdam, once a week. It was an unbelievably inspirational time for me! Geer is sorely missed.
1992 - 2003
Because of my personal philosophy and political convictions, the provincial authority of South Holland thinks it makes sense to put me to work on partnership projects with Eastern Europe. I act as the EU counterpart on various international projects in Latvia and Russia. During the many missions to those countries, I get to feel the pulse of the times and have the opportunity to liberate people working in and on the public domain there from their shock. We set out new lines to the future. Geer and Hans from Stipo are also called in for this international work.
1990 - 1994
After the adoption of the regional plan for the southern section of South Holland, I ask the provincial authority to 'send me out' with the regional plan to implement the 'structural element: restructuring of the riverbanks of the Beneden Merwede, Oude Maas and Noord to produce a new urban centre'. I am appointed deputy project manager of the ‘Drechtoevers' project office, that draws up a master plan in 1994. I discover that I need to draw on new competences for this work that are entirely different from those I learnt at the university and applied as a planner. My experience as a negotiator in union work, the political insight I developed in the student movement and the knowledge I have acquired while bringing up my children prove useful.
1973 - 2000
I occupy several positions with the province of South Holland in regional projects: urbanisation studies and regional plans. I learn to think at, and switch between, the local, regional and national levels. Alongside the actual work, I get interested in the conditions in which the work is being done and the links between the two. I become an active member of the ABVAKABO union in discussions with the provincial authority, start to work as a confidential contact person for individual representation, and am involved in the Organised Consultation system. Because of my awareness of being a part of a global community and the associated responsibility, I join a group that supports the union movement in South Africa, which is being severely repressed at this time by the apartheid system. These contacts provide me with important insights into human contacts without borders.
1969 - 1985
I get married in 1969, our son Hilko is born in Delft in 1972, I graduate in urban planning in 1973 and take up a position with the province of South Holland, and our daughter Sirpa is born in 1975 in The Hague. Our marriage ends in 1983, and I am given custody of the children. In 1985, my new, South American, partner Consuelo comes to live with us.
1964 - 1969
After completing my national service, I start my studies at the Architecture department of Delft Technical University in 1964. After a year, I become the editor of the student magazine, join the student union movement and take an active part in the democracy movement in '68-‘69. In the architecture department, I am one of the people who organises a 'housing tribunal' to answer the question of why, almost 25 years after the end of the Second World War, there is still a shortage of housing in the Netherlands. In 1968, I join the board of the Stylos student association. In 1969, I am appointed as the student assistant to the new professor of urban design, Niek de Boer, who also works as the director of the Provincial Planning department in South Holland. At this time, I learn to play on what are sometimes very different chessboards simultaneously, to bring together the experience and results of those 'players', to make a theoretical analysis of problems that crop up but, above all, to achieve practical results every time.
1943 - 1964
I am born in Deventer in 1943 and grow up in Hengelo in a family of three children. I am fascinated by aeroplanes on the Twente air base, and I want to be a pilot. I take flying lessons and pass the theoretical exam for the pilot's licence. After my final examination in 1962, I am admitted to the National Civil Aviation College in Eelde. But KLM is going through a difficult patch that year, and the College is not taking on any new students. I decide to do my national service so that I will have time to think about my future. During my service, I work at flight control, but I decide to give up my ambition to be a pilot and to study architecture.