Alastair coordinates planning and programming across Academy of Ideas projects including Battle of Ideas and Battle of Ideas Europe. He is co-founder of the residential school Living Freedom which allows 18-25-year-olds to explore the meaning and ideals of freedom in the twenty-first century.

Since 2008 Alastair has been  associate director of the Future Cities Project where he convenes the Future Cities Salon.  He is co-convenor of the Critical Subjects Architecture and Design Summer School.

From 2012 to 2016 at the British Council, Alastair was architecture programme manager and project director for large scale architecture and design exhibitions including the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale architecture.

Alastair is a writer, researcher and editor.  Times columnist Matt Ridley described his co-edited collection 'Lure of the City' as a “clear-eyed vision of cities.” His co-edited The Future of Community: Reports of a Death Greatly Exaggerated (Pluto Press 2008), said to be “a wake-up call for [those] engaged in the delivery of sustainable communities.” He has written for Blueprint, Architectural Review, Culture Wars, The Guardian, The Independent. He co-authored mantownhuman's Manifesto: Towards a New Humanism in Architecture which featured in Penguin Classics 100 Artists’ Manifestos.

Alastair has worked in urban design and urban planning, construction, property, regeneration and urban policy including advising on urban policy at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Alastair's post graduate research at the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, University of Cambridge was on mobility and space. There he founded the Min-Max-Cities Group, and convened the academic/public conference Minimum… or Maximum Cities?

From 2005 - 2015 he was an Editorial Board member at Urban Design, devising and  commissioning the Urban Design Classics column, and chair of the Urban Design Group's Publishing Awards panel.