My writing has been informed by extensive experience of living and working in a range of places and cultures worldwide, with people of every style, political outlook and custom. After my small country town upbringing, my lifetime of journeys would have shifted anyone’s perspective on how things are organized elsewhere in the world. It has led to an acceptance that there are multiple ways of doing things determined by physical, social and psychological environments. No solution is entirely wrong and no one is wholly right. So urban planning is art as well as science.

My career always called for listening and observation skills, reflecting the technical and social solutions that would work with the social grain as much as the physical and political context of a new place. Slowly but steadily that has crept into my approach to connecting with the world and then writing about it. Academic writing needs broad synthesis and a human touch to remain readable; popular styles still demand proper analysis and an evidence base.

Careers of this type ensure that cultural impressions rub off into a philosophy of life that stays open to fresh ideas. They challenge the notion that there is only one right way to do things, a mindset for which we British were sadly once well known. Little surprise then in the old joke that a consultant could be telling you what you may already know. Just a matter of seeing it all from a fresh perspective.

Achieving imaginative identification with others in a variety of written genres has been a joyful challenge. I would not have wanted it any other way!

New town site survey, Santivañez, Bolivia	Master Planning for Kuwait’s industrial zones
Udaipur Curiosity, India	Desert encounter Oman
Aerial site survey Sarawak, Malaysia	The Muscat waterfront. Regional land use studies in Oman