Professor Nabeel Hamdi is a pioneering architect, introducing participatory action planning and development agenda in designing our cities. This episode showcases how built environment practitioners can play a ‘developmental’ role in placemaking. Nabeel was born in Afghanistan and is of Iraqi origin. He started his school in the UK and was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London. Nabeel then worked for Greater London Council on social housing, applying participatory design process, that enabled homeowners to actively negotiate their needs to the local authorities. He then taught in many architectural schools worldwide including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Oxford Brookes University. Nabeel was influenced by 3 architects - John Habraken, Colin Ward and John Turner, who shaped his approach to development practice.

Nabeel has written many influential books, such as Housing Without Houses (IT Publications, 1995), The Placemaker's Guide to Building Community (Earthscan, 2010), Small Change (Earthscan, 2004), co-author of Making Micro Plans (IT Publications, 1988) and Action Planning for Cities (John Wiley and Sons, 1997), and edited the collected volumes Educating for Real (IT Publications, 1996) and Urban Futures (IT Publications, 2005).

Nabeel also won the prestigious UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour for his work on Community Action Planning.

Nabeel MARS mantra is ‘providing’, ‘enabling’, ‘adapting’ and ‘sustaining’ (P.E.A.S), suggesting these four inter-related sets of responsibility intrinsic to the art of practice in development.