Rudiger Ahrend

Rudiger Ahrend is Head of the Urban Programme in the OECD’s Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development. In this capacity, he has been supervising numerous urban projects, for example on metropolitan development and governance, urban productivity, land use, housing, green growth, urban transport, and national urban policies. He has also supervised numerous reviews and case studies of major metropolitan agglomerations, and is the main author of “The Metropolitan Century: Understanding Urbanisation and its Consequences”. As Head of the Urban Programme, Dr Ahrend is also in charge of the OECD Working Party on Urban Policies, as well as the OECD Roundtable of Mayors and Ministers. At the OECD, where he started as an official in 2002, Dr Ahrend first worked as a Senior Economist in the OECD’s Economic Department. Prior to joining OECD, he worked as a researcher and independent consultant. In addition to his work on OECD countries, he has extensively worked on Russia and other emerging economies. Rudiger Ahrend holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics, as well as degrees in Social Sciences and Mathematics from the University of Göttingen, Paris-IX Dauphine, and the Sorbonne.