Griet Geerinck has been the managing director of the autonomous municipality company “Stadsplanning Antwerpen” since 2005. This company coordinates the implementation of area-oriented programmes and strategic city projects in Antwerp, Belgium. The focus is on an integrated, multidisciplinary and cross-sector approach in which projects, investments, actors and views involved are aligned with one another in an optimal manner. The area-oriented programmes are: Central station area, the Scheldt Quays, the Islet (the reconversion of an historical port area) , Green Single (a combination of landscape, infrastructure and building concepts for the green area along the motorway ), the Sailor’s Quarter (a programme to balance prostitution activities in a living area) and Park Spoor Noord (a marshalling yard in the middle of a densely developed quarter is redesigned as a park of 18 ha).The company is a multidisciplinary team of about forty persons. (www.agstadsplanning.be)
Griet has been working on various urban renewal projects in Antwerp since 1992 and is experienced in project and process management of neighbourhood regeneration. She was involved in the making of the district development plans (1995), an investment for the nineteenth century belt, and in the Strategic Spatial Structure Plan for Antwerp (2006), a more strategic-based policy within an overarching vision for the entire city. The city of Antwerp won the ISOCARP Award for Excellence in 2008 for the latter. She has always been working within the scope of urban planning as part of the city policy.
In 2007, she was a member of the Local Organising Committee of the ISCOCARP congress in Antwerp (Urban Trialogues: Co-productive ways to relate visioning and strategic urban projects). Griet is a member of the Flemish organization for Space and Planning (VRP) and serves on the board of directors of two organizations of disadvantaged youth in cities (JES vzw and Kras vzw).
She collaborates with the university of Antwerp and Leuven to connect practice and theory by guiding students and exchanging knowledge with teachers. (University of Antwerp: OASeS centre; Artesis University college: architectural science; University of Leuven: the department of architecture, urban planning and spatial planning (ASRO) ) As consultant Griet participates in the production team of the Flemish “Urban renewal fund” to encourage capacity building in the city administration on qualitative urban city projects in Flanders (2007- 2014).