Dr. Roudaina Alkhani is a leading urban strategist, architect, and educator passionate about inclusive, sustainable urbanism and enhancing place quality through integrated planning and collaborative urban design. She is the Founding Director of Platforms in London, advising on urban and strategic planning, regeneration, master planning, sustainability, and urban design to shape vibrant, resilient, and climate-conscious cities.
Roudaina is a Chartered Member of RTPI (MRTPI), a registered Member of the Danish Association of Architects (Architect MAA) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She serves on the RTPI London Management Board and leads its CPD Committee, promoting knowledge exchange and lifelong learning.
Roudaina has an outstanding career with a wealth of international experience, working with local and central planning authorities, international organisations, and higher education, integrating innovative practice with rigorous research. Her portfolio, building on a pioneering PhD in urban revitalisation, includes leadership roles in developing city masterplans, city strategies, and frameworks for integrated neighbourhoods and sustainability. She has also delivered capacity-building programmes for planning authorities and provided educational leadership, curating academic programmes, championing pedagogical innovation.
At the City of Copenhagen, Roudaina co-led multidisciplinary teams to develop the pioneering Sustainable Copenhagen Strategy, positioning the city as a global model for inclusive, ecologically progressive urbanism building on civic identity and engagement culture, and developing its strategic sustainability tool. She has also advised local and central authorities in the MENA Region in collaboration with GIZ and the Swedish Cities Association on sustainable urbanisation and strategic planning, delivering capacity-building workshops. She also advised the EU on sustainable coastal areas, and advise on the adaptability of modernist urban areas, for example a framework strategy entry for the Danish Housing Fund for retrofitting modernist post-war housing into multigenerational living through an integrated approach strengthening health, social capital, ecology, and public realm quality, and a proposal for assessing new towns’ adaptability for RTPI.
Roudaina contributes to higher education as a guest lecturer/speaker at leading UK universities as University of Cambridge, University of Westminster, LSE, and Royal College of Arts. As Senior Lecturer and Co-Course Director at the University of Westminster from 2017–2023, she led MA and BA modules focusing on place quality, regeneration and sustainability. She delivered these educational programmes integrating her research and collaborating with the industry as for example, Atkins, Jacobs, Allies and Morrison and Arup, with local councils, including Hounslow and Medway, and with Deptford DNA communities to engage students in live exploration of post-pandemic urban recovery. Her focus was on developing integrated strategies that target the local economy, health, ecology, and public realm quality and address the role of the arts and new practices in circularity and sustainable mobility.
Roudaina’s PhD research at the Royal Danish Academy, 2007 into waterfront regeneration and the adaptive reuse of port heritage in North Western Europe under shifting modernities demonstrated how such sites can catalyse revitalisation through mixed-use collaborative models combining employment, living, leisure, new lifestyles, sustainability, heritage and public realm quality. Roudaina has continued her research through practice and higher-education work, guiding students in developing multi-scale sustainability and climate resilience frameworks and resulting in her published research that she also presented on behalf of UN-Habitat’s P4CA at the Innovate4Cities Conference as input to Cop26.
Roudaina is an affiliate of UN-Habitat’s Planners for Climate Action, an expert on the Worldwide Network of Port Cities. She is a published author and international speaker, with roles as chair and moderator at global events including the World Conferences on Sustainable Port Cities, Smart Cities London, and the Makkah Economic Forum.