Jannes Willems

Assistant Professor in Urban Planning, University of Amsterdam

Environment

My research is motivated by a desire to explain how urban environmental planners and water managers are preparing cities and regions to cope with climate change through the creation of new water infrastructures and their impact on communities and ecosystems. I investigate how infrastructures can enable sustainability transformations, focusing on the techno-politics of infrastructure provision: a low-salience yet highly complex policy domain with profound implications on cities and regions. I have worked in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research teams and conducted empirical fieldwork in Western-European cities.

U

RESEARCH FOCUS

Sustainability transformation + techno-politics of infrastructure

i 3 Table Of Content

Editorships

Rooilijn — Platform for Science and Policy in Spatial Planning

In Planning — Academic publishing platform for Spatial Planning focused on the Netherlands and Belgium

Selected publications

Custers, G., & Willems, J. J. (2024). Rotterdam in the 21st century: From ‘sick man’to ‘capital of cool’. Cities, 150, 105009.

Willems, J. J., & Giezen, M. (2022). Understanding the institutional work of boundary objects in climate-proofing cities: the case of Amsterdam Rainproof. Urban Climate, 44, 101222.

Willems, J. J., Kenyon, A. V., Sharp, L., & Molenveld, A. (2021). How actors are (dis) integrating policy agendas for multi-functional blue and green infrastructure projects on the ground. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 23(1), 84-96.

Willems, J. J., Busscher, T., van den Brink, M., & Arts, J. (2018). Anticipating water infrastructure renewal: A framing perspective on organizational learning in public agencies. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 36(6), 1088-1108.

Willems, J. J. (2018). Beyond maintenance: Emerging discourses on waterway renewal in the Netherlands. Transport Policy, 72, 1-12.

More publications

Teaching & courses

Bachelor programmes in Human Geography and Planning and Future Planet Studies
Urban and Regional Planning master programme
Human Geography and Planning: Introduction to Spatial Planning
Future Planet Studies: Introduction Spatial Planning, and Food and the City
Urban and Regional Planning MSc: Climate-Proofing Cities