Bruno Dercon is a Senior Human Settlements Officer at the UN-Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Fukuoka, Japan. In 2005, Mr. Dercon joined UN-Habitat as the housing policy adviser for the reconstruction in Aceh after the Tsunami.  As a senior staff officer in the region, he has been overseeing programmes and initiatives in China, Mongolia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Myanmar, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. Mr. Dercon is specialized in planning and housing. He has master degrees in architecture and engineering as well as business administration.  He started off professionally in 1986 as a researcher in Belgium and Indonesia. He then worked extensively in the private sector in Asia in the 1990’s. From 2001 to 2004 he was the technical director of Townland Consultants Ltd, a planning services company based in Hong Kong. He currently supports a UN-Habitat programme in China on improving urban public spaces, in close collaboration with UN-Habitat’s global programme on public spaces and with the Wuhan Land Use and Spatial Planning Research Center.