 Yes, thank you Okay politics Something else as a Ambassador, sorry When Hurricane Sandy hit New York You see on the right What happened is you see on the left? Now Hurricane Sandy was not a surprise. It was also not the worst storm ever We've seen worst storms all over the world But it hit New York and everybody knows New York So it was the opportunity at least for President Obama to raise it to the top of his agenda Now Obama was aware of this when he started office Actually on in his first month He said no Katrina on my watch and what he meant with that he didn't want to see Malfunctioning federal government not being on the ground when the disaster hit so he made his team prepare He knew the region was at risk Why we do all this research that just shows that New York is a vulnerable place with a lot of assets at risk It actually ranks number third in the world World Bank study on assets at risk Now Sandy created a lot of mess in the New York region and therefore a lot of default in infrastructure So the federal government even with this Fragmentation in Congress we talk about allocated 60 billion dollars to the rebuilding of the region 60 billion dollars is a As a common effort by Republicans and Democrats You couldn't imagine that now with Trump and Clinton agreeing over 60 billion But at that time after a disaster you take such an opportunity Obama installed a task force the hurricane Sandy rebuilding task force I served on and we were Tossed to spend the billions Now I did study in the region right after Sandy with my Harvard students And it showed that if there's a word for governance fragmentation. This is the region where you'll find it You have voluntary mayors on the Jersey Shore no mayors on Long Island Big shot mayor in New York a Republican governor in New Jersey Democratic governor in New York and different Constitutions with different positions for every politician and government agency in the world So what is 60 billion boiled down to business as usual? So this is the rebuilding process of New York and this is actually federal policy that makes you raise your house after a disaster Now we know that the complexity of vulnerability is critical It's not only that 75% of the power supplies in the floodplain and 80% of fuel storage in the floodplain There's also clear connection between Social vulnerability and physical vulnerability as is shown in the map with the red and the blue blue is water Thanks to Sandy red is poor. Thanks to us policy When it's purple and I was there this is new work on the map Social housing low-income housing a Search that was almost as high as actually as high as this room and the water was so Contaminated they had to close the playgrounds because the soil got contaminated and the kids would actually get really sick So the question of the task force of the president to the task was was how can you leapfrog to the future and for that? I redeveloped the competition. It's called rebuild by design and this competition therefore was a top-down decision entering the bottom-up approach My position in that task force was to create a detour a sidestep out of regulatory gridlocks, but also a sidestep out of the disconnect between Politics and people with professionals and the communities because there's no way you can get to innovation if you trust on the policies of today this detour consisted of Asking the talent of the world to work with talent of the region and really think at the regional scale so from a national perspective or a federal perspective find out what the Vulnerabilities and interdependencies are on that regional scale, but at the same time go deep on the local Find out the local need let the people sit at the same table as designers and planners and urban designers and engineers and social scientists and economists so the whole bunch of them and politicians and Anyone you can name and make the match between that Systemic need as well as the personal need we had all the agencies for the federal government We had all regional government. We had partnering organizations for the knowledge We had some millions from foundations to fund the process and fund the teams out of a hundred and forty eight We had ten teams with international talent and a jury But most importantly we had over five hundred organizations with over five thousand people working with us for nine months to discover What to do next? We came up with ten projects in one region and here's the list and In a way this was a match between top down and bottom up It was a way for the federal government to take this sidestep out of their Responsibility, but they allocated a billion dollar out of the sixty to actually start the implementation So this was not a game. This was real We took a systems approach now you can go back to From Humboldt to think about what the systems approach means But we know when we think about system that everything's connected social cultural economic and Environmental and the world economic forum proves us right that this systems approach is a necessity When we think about vulnerabilities in the future and the interdependencies between them boil down both in where they come from Their origin as in the way they impact so how we adapt so being Comprehensive both in mitigation and adaptation strategies is actually a way forward and this is where planning and design comes in now We've seen these two we made the The joke in the rebuild by design task force to say which they married and got babies I don't know if that would have ever been a happy marriage, but The idea that the merger of these perspectives Could actually get to this issue Because walking in a disastrous region and it can be Bangladesh or Myanmar or the Philippines after typhoons But it can also be New Jersey This is the sign that comes on the wall when people lose everything this man lost his wife his house and his business So he doesn't want a leapfrog. He doesn't care what an architect or a politician thinks about the future He wants to go back So that small need needs to be connected with a professional urge and not with the police sending in as The u.s. Did after her came Katrina so it's public and private It's collective and corporate and it's about ownership with all community all the way up to the president and down Rebuild by design challenge this institutional capacity came up with transformative projects increased capacity on the local as well as on the federal scale It was replicated replicated on the national scale with a national competition and even an international challenge in asia And Africa and it was real funding for real implementation, but there's a problem when you ask for innovation You need to change the rules because innovative projects never fit within current boundaries for implementation And now New York and New Jersey are tasked for implementing Innovative projects with a billion dollars and they're stuck with the rules. They got they have the same rules of housing and urban development They have the same rules that were created by their own constituencies by their own governments on their local and regional scale and Only the rules of the community changed So now there's the expectation that these communities actually get innovative projects while the government fails to change So the detour has to impact the rules Now I go back to the highest level of the world which was the Paris Agreement no party But the showcase of our failure, but there's also a business case in that failure If we don't change the curves in the next five years, we'll never get to a two-degree world Now five years is like a political term five years is also An economic you can easily assess it in an economic way So if we start to think about making city We have to prepare for the future and not respond and repair use this detour approach But also dare to start and that's the failures of today's politics is that we don't dare to start because we don't Dare to make mistakes Now I don't know one if we can use habitat three in the urban agenda as the detour process because I'm Not certain that these guys and girls Man and women can actually be connected through a design process Where we bring everybody together with the finest we promised the world and I don't want to put Alejandro in the weirdest position ever But wouldn't it be great To see such a match Turn will into something powerful. Thank you