Willem Salet is professor emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the department of Planning, Geography and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam. He chaired Urban Planning from 1998 to 2017. He was the Scientific Director of the Amsterdam study center for the Metropolitan Environment AME (2008-2013). He was the President of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) 2008-2010, and was awarded AESOP Honorary Membership in 2016. As a sociologist and urban planner, Willem Salet specializes in the institutional aspects of metropolitan development. Institutions are conceived in a sociological sense as the patterning of public norms. He investigates the cultural, legal, and political dimensions of public norms in the making of sustainable metropolitan spaces.