Transatlantic Urbanism

Welcome.

I’m Ronald Woudstra, graduate student in City & Regional Planning and in Historic Preservation at New York City’s Pratt Institute. Before that, I have obtained a Bachelor of Science in Human Geography and Planning from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. 

Transatlantic Urbanism is a term I coined to describe the paradigm through which I view the built environment. It is a paradigm that is shaped by virtue of my experiences as a student of the built environment in many places, across North America and Europe. Transatlantic Urbanism is as much about seeing cities in one country from a different cultural perspective as it is about finding ways in which spatial solutions from one country could be used to improve cities in another one. It is also the understanding of cities from multiple cultural viewpoints at once. Cities are culturally constructed things, and people’s perception of cities is inherently shaped by their culture. Stepping beyond those pre-established notions of what constitutes a city and how it should be configured is what I’ll attempt to do here on Transatlantic Urbanism, as I try to share Dutch and American visions on cities with the online community.