 Welcome to the sixth plenary of the 2022 International Conference on Sustainable Development. Our topic is Translational Knowledge to Shape Sustainable Urban Futures. It's my great pleasure to turn us over to our moderator, Dr. Eramar Revy, Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. Eramar, the floor is yours. Thank you, Lauren. So it's a real pleasure to join you wherever you are in the world. I know some people are up very late at the moment, like many of us in New York, and others are just starting their day. So we're going to be running this webinar on Translational Knowledge to Shape Sustainable Urban Futures. I have with me a spectacular panel of colleagues who've been working on this theme for many years, but very closely over the last five. We have Professor Michael Keith from the University of Oxford in the UK, Professor Sue Pannell from the University of Bristol, and also the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Professor Pangyung Zhou from Peking University in China, who's also the chief editor of, you know, a key urban journal in this called Cities, and Professor Juan Carlos Duque from EFET University in Columbia. Now, all of us have been working together with a very large team over the last five years as part of the peak urban program that basically brings together work in five different countries, four different continents, and is sort of embedded in work in let's say in four cities in Beijing in Bangalore and Cape Town, and in Medellin in Columbia. And we've been trying to understand how sustainable urban futures would play themselves out. This is of course in the context of the sustainable development goals, particularly SDG 11 which focuses on sustainable cities and communities and the reason that I think this is important is, you know, about five years ago, a number of us including Sue and myself, actually put together a massive open online course, which looked at sustainable cities and communities, and try to introduce them, and the ideas to the world. It was pretty much shot in every continent including in many of the countries we're talking about just now. And it's done pretty well at the moment. It's on the SDG Academy work website. They're over, I would say, maybe 4045,000 people who registered on this course, and it gives you a good understanding of the basics of, you know, of sustainable cities and the key elements in the debates that took place while the SDG is being framed and subsequently from that. At the current point of time we're almost at the halfway mark between 2015 and 2030, and there are a whole range of new challenges that are kind of emerging. And this move will try and address them based on empharical knowledge from some of these sort of leading universities in the world who work on these questions, and have worked together with a whole range of researchers practitioners to try and understand what's happening. And we'll be considering sort of three themes at the moment to look at three challenges and opportunities. The first is the core challenge of generating this translation research that brings together research from multiple disciplines on a whole range of new cutting edge themes, and the second is that with what we call new urban sciences, which is in a sense, the foundational knowledges that will allow us to try and interrogate and address, you know, the wicked problems of dealing with sustainable cities, both now and in the future. The second question, of course, is the core challenge of addressing the global urban agenda, which is the SDGs, and a whole range of things that are tied to that including the Paris climate agreement, Sendai, and the new urban agenda which kind of underpins that process to link, you know, the global urban agenda, and the opportunity of international collaborations, which are, which are actually localized which are actually grounded in national and city context. So basically, connecting local processes and local initiatives with global science and global institutions. And the third one is a question of how one connects practices on the ground and you know that a whole range of practices that are there in each of the countries we're talking about tremendous interesting new challenges and sort of innovations having played themselves out. China, of course, is the most dramatic. We've seen, I would say the largest urbanization in history happening over the last 30 odd years in China. So how does one take the practices from that contrast that with the history of, let's say urbanization and urban processes in the Americas and in Europe, which happened a little bit earlier. And of course a hyper urbanization that we've seen in Latin America over the last few decades so how does one link that with with using research and bring that together with practice to shape urban future so that's the broad context we'll try and use these sort of three themes of translation research, the connections of the global urban agenda, global science and institutions and practice and shaping urban futures together. Now, the important thing that's emerged over the last five years is the question of international cooperation and trying to make this possible. In fact, I would say it's it's much more than international cooperation. It's a process that is enabled us to bring together, you know, whole range of researchers, some people who've been working in the space for decades, plus a whole range of younger people, postdocs, scholars, people who are actually doing the doctors and master to enable them to work across these geographies and address a range of no core questions, which underpin the connection between new urban science sustainability science. And of course, emerging questions like, like, like, like climate change. So to kick things off in some senses, you know, I'd like to sort of request Michael to sort of dive in and give us some sense of how the peak program has kind of underpinned the knowledge that have helped us create the MOOC and how the process of building the MOOC has enabled a very wide engagement with with research questions and application across the world. So over to Michael. Thanks, Aaron. Thanks to all the colleagues and our hosts today for for this launch the launch of the shaping urban futures course, the MOOC, which is on Coursera now that we're launching today. The process is the product of an extraordinary collaboration between colleagues who are here, many colleagues who aren't here and I guess what we all shared throughout this whole process was a disposition if you like a way of thinking about the challenges of the future and particularly the challenges for future cities, precisely because the scale of change and the pace of change creates certain kind of dynamics about the way we think about cities we know that cities are not just systems but their systems of systems that their sites in which different systems interface transport systems health systems, economic systems ecological systems. They're there by they're unstable in some ways so some of the paradoxes of the way we think about when futures are on the one hand as I'll say in just a second we know an awful lot more and more about the very short term it is possible to use new ways of gathering data new ways of analyzing data to know enormous amount about the short term future. The pace of change accelerate sometimes it means that it sometimes is simultaneously the case, we know less and less about what happens over the longer the longer term. It's also the case that we were very committed, as you can see from the people in front of you in the MOOC itself, and in the work we did on the peak urban program to try and both recognize the historical legacies that confront every city the geographical specificities of every city, but at the same time try and build a form of inquiry that actually tries to have some fundamental ways of translating research into practice. The title of this session is is translational research what we mean by that is how we think about how research can move from the ivory tower into practice, but also from the field into the ivory tower with talking about relations between people who are finding solutions on the ground and academics as much as a direction of travel that just goes the other way so the way in which our program was designed was both to to combine a sense of the ways in which new, new forms of methodologies new ways of thinking about the cities what we're calling the new urban sciences lend us a sense of prediction the P of an acronym the P a K but at the same time, precisely because it is a changing so fast they are always particularly at the interface between different systems, the sites of newness coming into the world a sense of emergence that which is where the e comes from. And at the same time we also acknowledge that system cities are not straightforwardly technical systems or social systems associate technical systems part of the disruptions of cities are driven by technological change and the way those changes are adopted and how we make sense of these changes actually demands a parity of esteem between different kinds of analytical lenses different academic disciplines how one brings together engineers and architects and demographers and and health specialists means that we need to think about how the different forms of valuation, the values at the heart of different ways of seeing the city create trade offs between different ways of thinking about the city so with the way we talk about this is that we suggest that alongside a sense of trying to understand how the city works, the analytical questions of how the city works, we need to think simultaneously about the normative questions, the way in which we want the city to appear in the future to think about in whose image the city will be made. So those normative questions and those analytical questions also set up a further dimension for us that informs the MOOC that we need to also think about the operational space at which we operate. The fact that at times this is at the scale of the community, right the way down at the low scale working with people co producing ways of short shorter term or longer term solutions to problems. Other times it's at the scale of the city or maybe the city region, but it may also be at the level of the nation state, and clearly part of what we're interested in is thinking about how we build from these building blocks, a global urban agenda that isn't about imposing upon cities across the world a single way of thinking is using what we call this urban disposition to think about an approach to urban futures, a way of thinking about urban futures that recognizes that China is very different from Europe that's very different from India that's very different from the experiences of Latin America, or North America for that point and it's that, it's that disposition that kind of lens I think our MOOC a particular value, precisely because we read across different sites, not to synthesize them or to compare them but to try and learn from those differences and that diversity. And so hopefully that gives you a sense of how I think our collaboration has fed into this over the last few years. And I mean one way that it's been done, Michael is actually in the structure of the course, where you start with how to know the city, and then of course ask the question of what it is to know and know that's worth knowing in the city. And then of course how cities are changing because it's tremendous disruption of both social technical systems and social ecological systems and finally asking the really big question, which I think is critical not only for cities now but over the rest of the country and that is can cities transform themselves, and how can they help sort of transform the future in some senses in a very concrete way. So, just to come come to you here. Like I said, you know, China has gone through the largest urbanization in all of history it's transformed itself it's transformed its urban landscape in some senses so we'd really like to hear from you. So why China is important. How urbanization in China is different, and how the new urban sciences that are emerging in China have a lot to give to the world and what we can learn from that and you know how your own research and practices, sort of connect with these with these questions. So all yours. Okay, thanks. Thanks. So, yeah, everyone knows that is China noises become the one of largest the city, where you know so urban cities, urban residents living. So actually in the past 20 years, each year on average. It looks like it's 10 million people is moved from the jury to cities. So, I still remember, you know, I talked to these magic such as from, from a European that he talked to me, if you want to see if you want to observe. Urbanization, urbanization, proper precise live. And this one big case, China could be a good case, of course, there are the cases because in a very short period, there's a lot of big huge changes. Obviously, you know, just cover a lot of different aspects that people move from rare to cities, but you know, and in China, the situation is that many of my family still have land in rural areas, keeping on there. And so we see, and some researchers call that half organization or something like this, because you will see young people leave the city, the parents still in a rural area. So that's, that's bring lots of challenges, for example, aging in rural areas because all the people, they live in the rural area. And also for the young for cities, the cities become very young and cities grow very fast. So the young people, they adapt to new technology, very, very fast, you will see in cities, the people use that mobile phone, lots of new technical communication ways everywhere. So that's also bring new challenges to travel plan urban planners. So how we can make this young people or young generation urban citizens be happy or be familiar with these new situations. So, you know, this is for urban sense, when we, when we, when we call it in China, we do need to cooperate with our international partners, because each, you know, for urban sense, I think one of important research direction or one is how we can achieve some general rules of urban growth. So, you know, that probably European, European particularly UK cities already in a very high level of urbanization or very high, a mutual stage, I call it a mutual stage of urbanization, the people become stable. And so how they can manage that people in the, in the, in the station of rapid urbanization. So we need to learn that. And also how we can find some general rules of people movement from rare to the cities. And we need a general knowledge about that. So that means we need to know, we need to know not only the cities, the things happening in China, we also need to know the things happening in other countries. That's, that's the reason we need to work together. And also I understand that the very, very fast, very good relations in India too. And also in Africa, and also other, you know, countries, developed countries. So, I think this is a very good chance to make this urban sense, this urban sense, you know, interdisciplinary research areas come to, come to including China and other developing countries as well. So, according to my experiences, you know, for example, when I do the research at the Peking University, I co-operate with some colleagues from Cambridge University and also Oxford University, because my research may, may be focused on transportation or transport modeling or forecast the sense. So I co-operate with them to study some cases in Beijing or in China and the cities. And then we, you know, share some comments and share some ideas how we can do that. I think it's really, really, it's a time where we need to co-operate to do this in particular for some green, for some cities growing very fast. And China cities because many researchers have never seen such big challenges or big rapid changes in the past two or three decades. We need no different knowledge from different contexts. So we can mix it and learn it and re-transfer to local, some guidelines or local policy recommendations to get local governors. So I think that's very important to co-operate with international partners, particularly in this new era of urban sense. You know, as we know that urban sense actually is quite a new topic. And because this, you know, starts with some from, from scholars from the UK or U.S. And some big names there, Macabre Co or just like that, Macabre. So, and actually that new urban sense, it really depends on some new technicals or big data or some things. So I think we need to co-operate together with different visitors to, to, to, to, to observe or to study the local cases and then make the local cases, you know, to international, to tell international stories. So we can find some general, permanent general rules. So that's, yeah, that's, I think, for me, and I would say, yeah, that's, that's a very high nationality for international cooperation in this new urban sense, particularly for China researchers. They are, they are, they are keen to co-operate with outside, outside or see researchers to, to, to see how, to explain and to, to find how China's cities, why China sees growth just like this. So, and also, I think, you know, we, we, we are co-operating now, not only with this, with other countries, developed countries, also we need to co-operate with the India or developing countries so we can know each other, we can learn from each other. Yeah, that's for me, Albert. Thank you, Panong, that I think, you know, your absolutely right peak has given us the opportunity, not only to see what's happening in Beijing from your eyes, but also sort of comparatively in many ways, because what you were saying is absolutely correct. What the, you know, this wave that we've seen happening in China from the, let's say, early 1990s to now is starting to move through South Asia, and then, in fact, when it comes to Africa, it's going to become a tsunami over the next 20 or 30 years, because the African urbanization is completely unprecedented from such a small base. You know, China and South Asia have had historically strong urban cultures, but for Africa to go from, you know, 20 or 50 million people about a century ago in cities to a billion is going to be a remarkable change, not only technical but cultural, etc. And, you know, so you've seen this from a ringside view, as we try to construct this sort of global urban agenda in some ways. So, I mean, it will be very interesting to sort of reflect on how one connects the experience in Africa. And of course, many of the new agendas that are sort of coming together, not only the new urban agenda but questions of biodiversity which are coming up, very critically as we have to provide food and you know, water and other services. The big challenges we've seen in Durban sort of come to mind just about a month, month old, but also questions of climate change these are emerging challenges, which we sort of not conceived of in the past. And whether it's spun cities in China, or the kind of challenges that you've had to deal with. So, you know, in Africa, where transportation in a sense is a core element of trying to sort of to balance out the spatial divide so you know it'll be wonderful to hear from you on how this connection between the local to the global and back, like what William was saying, and the attempt to create new knowledges, you know, science is one element of it but there are other knowledges that that that are being created as we speak in the humanities and the social sciences. How you see that actually playing itself out. I think one of the things which is really nice about engaging the MOOC, as people register for it and begin to take up and work their way through it, is you get a lot of different voices from people grounded in different cities on exactly this question that Michael was trying to talk about of how do we take a slightly different disposition on the urban, one which recognizes that things are complex happening fast, happening in different ways in different places, but are happening across a range of social and technical and political changes that are transforming our world. So, no, clearly, the scale of urbanization in India or China is very evident at the moment and one sees that but if you're sitting in a city when a rural area of Africa and in your lifetime things are changing, you need to understand that and if you are trying to be involved in managing that process. Then you need to be thinking about it and even if you're living in Latin America and you've been in a context where they've been cities for some time, but you are faced with actually engaging those changes and engaging the realities of new urban spaces. You need to find ways to think about, to approach, to understand, to implement, which are commensurate with the problems, the problems are big. And that's a fantastic and exciting field to be in. And I think what has been refreshing about the peak program and I hope you will find refreshing in the MOOC is that there's a dialogue between places about what that means and sometimes when you see not the same problem somewhere else, although that is also reassuring because you can look and compare notes on how you can come about it. But when you're able to sit back and say, how can we approach this collectively that is refreshing, that is emboldening. That is what is really helpful. So what I think the urban disposition that Michael spoke about that is complex, understands complexity, recognises the imperative for new knowledge assumes that that is an interdisciplinary kind of knowledge, but also one that where the parts of knowledge which sit in different disciplines and professions and residents and states can be brought together. In other words, it's not something which is so intractable, we can't bring it together. That is helped by what we call this translational mode where we start off from the assumption that we want to solve problems. So if you're the kind of person who wants to understand the problem, wants to help design a problem and probably wants to be involved in implementing it. We think that this methodology, if you like, of having a translational approach to knowledge is helpful. And we think a disposition which embraces the components which are spelt out through KEAK, the peak disposition which the MOOC goes into detail on is really helpful. So that I think is particularly reassuring when you're sitting on the African continent where you are not, you're aware that there is even more to come than what you are already engaging. I think if you're sitting in China and India, you're in the middle of it. If you're sitting in Latin America or Europe, you probably are trying to address nuance, amend some of what wasn't done very well. So here in the African continent, you really can begin to think that perhaps you can do things differently from the first. And just very briefly, if I've got time to talk about why I think that is helpful to think about that globally, not just locally. I think when we come together and say, does it matter how colleagues in Africa do urbanization? We know that it does. Okay, it matters not just for them, but it matters for everybody. Because the way Chinese cities are built, the way Indian cities are built, the way Latin American cities are built, the way European cities and American cities were built has put us in the position that we are in. So what happens in Africa matters, it matters for climate change, it matters for biodiversity, it matters for global economic development and financial flows. There's a local component to thinking in a translational kind of way, but there is also a global component. And I think that's the context where things like the sustainable development goals are helpful because they help to set out a normative position. And so increasingly what you've seen are two things. One, the scientific community beginning to talk about a global urban science. Okay, helped along, not exclusively a big data approach. There's room for anthropologists there too. But at the same time, the wider intellectual community and I hope that there are some people who do the MOOC, who are in practice, who are beginning to say, well, we have to think about the values that we want in cities. Personally, I think it's helpful to say, what has this been in Africa, because that's a good litmus test. But why don't you listen to the cases in the MOOC and see whether you can make it apply in Indonesia, wherever it is that you're sitting. I think that's helpful. And that's what we mean by global urban agenda. Thank you. So I mean, just picking up on that, you know, Pangan, I think that, you know, at least my own experiences, you know, we go to China, and you go to a city like Xi'an and you see the history of urbanization sort of emerging before you And, you know, the translation of that in the current context. And then you come to a, you know, a dramatic pop up kind of city in like, you know, Shenzhen and how it's actually just completely transformed or even Shanghai for that matter. You know, how Pudong is kind of just dramatically exploded over the last 20 or 30 years. So I think there are lots of things that we need to build on and learn from in terms of Chinese experience, both the challenges, but also the ways of dealing with things. So let me give you, I mean, from my point of view, my own lived experience to examples. One is the building out of high speed rail. You know, high speed rail was something that was thought to be things that would work only in rich and very well endowed countries fine. But the way China has kind of invested and connecting up now pretty much all of its larger urban centers with high speed rail puts it in a unique position to deal with the challenges of climate change for the 21st century because not only people but also the movement of goods and logistics becomes much more efficient and effective. And I guess the questions that emerge are, you know, for, for, for parts of South Asia or for Africa. Are these the kind of things that we should be looking forward to, you know, can countries really afford this at what stage of development and urbanization does one pick that up. More recently, the massive and this has happened, I think, you know, literally over the period of COVID the massive transition in, in vehicle ownership in China towards electrification. So, you know, I've seen it starting with electric buses. But now if you look at the car fleets, etc. There's a big shift that's taking place, apart from your metro system so even in the transpiration domain, which is really critical for urban functioning, etc. There are in very, very interesting experiences of making choices and I know from colleagues in China, a great debate that sort of opened up for the last 20 years of whether you should invest in infrastructure, or you should have a sort of also invest in people. And, you know, social protection and all the social safety nets and, in a sense China made a choice of investing very strongly on infrastructure, whether that works for for for China itself. What are the sort of underlying challenges, and what are the elements of this that we can draw upon as we go to sort of other geographies so you know some reflections on that might be quite interesting and then maybe one guy colors week we can pick up later on what we can learn from American cities I mean. So, first, Panjong just some reflections on that to connect in with what, what Sue was saying about lessons we can learn from across the world from China. Okay, thanks. Thanks, I'm also thanks. Yeah, what what you just told me so it's a big that's not a big challenge changes happening. And also this changes, you know, it's look like it's easy won't, you know, turn around and they just just go forward. And these changes become very deep deep in social society of China. For example, the high speed actually high speed railway system totally changed that this so large area of country, you know, this is, you know, the people the young people, and they could easily find a job, and it's a job market become larger and larger. And also, you know, I did the research and three years ago and I also give the presentation in a university of Manchester. And so, my research main conclusion is that, you know, the larger city benefit more from the high speed infrastructure that small cities at this stage because when this has been really was built you find that small cities feel lost neighbors. And also some financial sources are on the sources, you know, to move into the big cities and big cities become larger and larger and richer and richer. So that's a big challenge actually. And you know, there's everything just like my call had two sides, has been is a good thing, and make people, you know, so move from here to there is easily. And you can, you can, you know, have a breakfast at this is this city. And then you can have that, you know, like dinner, you're not a city in Xi'an or breakfast in Beijing from Beijing to Xi'an you really take if you take a normal train would take 24, 27 hours, but now it's just a six or four hours, five and a half hours. That's me okay morning, I just have breakfast here. And I think it's good to, you know, make the differences between the differences in culture and consumption, you know, consumption, since between the two cities become smaller. And this brings big challenges to Xi'an because many, many, you know, new in many skilled workers, they moved to Beijing because Beijing that salaries in Beijing is high. Why, you know, I just live in Xi'an and then find job in Beijing. So you will find you will see the Xi'an lost some highly talented workers. You know, challenges and opportunities, they both could exist for these new technologies. Another big challenges, I think I want to share with you is that the Xi'an transport, we just mentioned that, you know, we share bicycle share, car share. Now it's the sharing economic become very common, very common in China cities, you know, use your mobile phone, you call it any car, not just normal taxi, they just, you know, some persons work at the daytime and after the, after five or six o'clock, they find part of them, they just drive their car and park on the roadside, they are reaching for the order from the internet. So the people just easily, they share cars, they share bicycles themselves. So this is become very new trend since. So, but also this bring a big challenge to government to manage that, because for sharing car, you, you know, everywhere, they need, they need, you know, management. And also there's some, some social, you know, risk, if you take some sharing car, you know, it's a strange people, you know, since you drive that car, they pick up you from some place to other places. So as I think there's also the opportunity and challenges. And also I would, the sort of things I want to see the big, big act challenges is new technicals change our culture of society. This is could be a very long term. And it's because, you know, in a MOOC, and I, I, I agree lecture about the transplant modeling. But actually, it's for future child behavior, you will see that behavior is totally changed. The young people, they are used to stay at home, they order everything from online. It's clink, my cock, my cock color, clink, one, you know, bottom, bottom of coffee, a cup of coffee, because it's, this is much easier in China. Do you know why? Because our labor is cheap. There's a lot of, lots of, you know, logistic, because the people, they drive that and another motor car, they easily to send everything. So this actually, this is low cost of logistic. That means, okay, our transport cost is low and people easily can, they can afford online shopping since everywhere. And so that's, that's, that's a cut to change. And not only young people, the middle age people, they just stay, they like to order some food from online. They like order everything from online. And even that's the, you know, the young, the old generation, and you know, for the elderly people, they started to do online shopping. They started learning that. So that's the big market. So, so everything is, it's, this is a very, it's a, it's a long-term change. The people, they, they, they are not used to online commuting. But how about face-to-face? And we are, we are, you know, we are the human beings. We need to talk, we need to see each other. And so that's very important. This is a long-term challenge, actually. And also, for our researchers, it's quite hard to see this behavior change to modeling that. You know, how much more than, how to use more than that is new change. So, yeah, that's my, you know, response is to, to armor. So that, that's very good, very great comments on that. Thanks. No, no, thanks so much. So one, I mean, I think some of the most interesting lessons that many of us learned in this whole sort of, you know, journey for the last five years is actually coming and seeing how you have managed in Colombia and particularly in Medellin. Medellin has become sort of world famous for a whole range of creative things that have happened there. But I think the, I mean, when we look talking about emergence, if you've only focused on the experience of European and North American cities, which tend to converge to particular stable patterns of development, as Bangrang was saying, you don't really actually capture the challenges that you've dealt with very successfully in Medellin, for example. The extreme violence, basically the city, working very, very far from equilibrium, you know, on all its counts in terms of informality in terms of, you know, conflict, etc. And yet in spite of that, your colleagues and yourselves, you know, running a remarkable educational institution there, making the connection between what is happening on the ground, and the research that you haven't bring that back into, and being able to transform the city, and sort of bringing it back to a very very different pathway from what it was on. So I think that's a very inspiring story because many of our cities may well go the Medellin way or the way of Rio, or, you know, Sao Paulo, etc. large, deeply divided, highly unequal in some senses, but experiencing all the forces we just talked about, you know, technology at one end, you know, rapid expansion at the other end, serious resource challenges. So I think, for us, at least for me personally, that learning was very, very important. Almost as important as actually seeing Cuba, and the fact that a very different form of urbanization is possible, you know, if the boundary conditions change. So I think it'll be fantastic if you can give us, you know, insights of how you people have actually managed this process, and how one can sort of shape urban futures by linking research and practice from the work of RISE, from the work that we've seen done remarkably in in Colombia. Thank you, Amara, and thank you for the invitation. Yeah, like everybody here in the audience know, has listened about informality, inequality, lack of accessibility. And if I say those words, people from India may be thinking of a specific situation, people from Medellin, if I talk about informality, they have an idea about what informality is in Medellin. So we agree that they are global challenges. But once you take that global challenge and locate the challenge in a city, that challenge interact with the specificity like the DNA of the city and take some interesting nuances that preclude the use of a standardized solution. And this is why it's very important to have like the experience of cities in Latin America combined with the cities, the experience with cities in India, in China, because, for example, as you said, like in Medellin, we have done very interesting innovations. For example, the cable car. Okay, the cable car work very well in Medellin and a huge impact, but it doesn't mean that we can take exactly the same model and put it in Peru or in India. You have to deal with the specificity of the city to make that solution work in other places. And the same happens the other way around. For example, accessibility like designing bike paths. There are many models to math, mathematics models, very fancy models to draw bike paths. But when you try to run those models in Medellin, you realize that they don't work as well as they work in Europe, because Medellin has specific characteristics that make difficult for those models to work as they work. This sign in other places. So, when you have researchers like in big project researchers from around the world, sharing those experience, sharing how those global challenge behave in different places. It help us as a community and I hope it's going to help the students in the MOOC to get a better understanding of those global challenges. Yeah, that's an important goal there. So, the students will be able to identify that accessibility challenges in India are way different from those in Medellin or that informal settlements are very different in different cities and even within the city informal settlements are very different. So that help us to get a better understanding of those challenges and more important to produce even better theory that if you have a better understanding of the problem, you as a community can provide, can make a better urban theory. And also, like, if you do that with the participation of people from the global south, you can overcome the situation of the global north producing urban theory. No, we are contributing to that. So, so if I would pick up that point, John Carlos, you know the thing is, a lot of practitioners across the world, you know, both in the global south and the north would, you know, would sort of make the claim that you don't really need urban theory fine the practice is good enough, we can bring high speed rail or you know, we can set up a new system for social protection, or we can do housing etc without the practice and we know without the theory. But I think what what we're learning and I think this is something that we've really been able to do collectively and co create through the peak program and many other kind of initiatives is the fact that theory is very important for two or three things. You have to scale without actually having good theory. And you know scaling is multi dimensional so you have to examine how the theory breaks down in particular context like function was saying they're great advantages of a particular innovation but it also also has its similarly when you're looking at a different social or cultural context, how do you take something which is in a different cultural context and then apply it whether it's, you know, physical but techno technical system like a cable car, or you know a program like you know Brazil had to try and decrease inequality which you find in more in most cities across across the world. So, the theory is very critical but I think we're building theory a little bit differently from what it would be done. In the 20th century where you know you build it as sociologists or transportation planners or economists or anthropologists etc. The city forces you to bring all of these ideas together. Fine, and in that sense, it's sort of hybridized this kind of these kind of processes so in the work that you've done which you know we've seen very effectively applied in, in, in many and you're taking, you know advanced models you're using remote sensing which is now available across the world using advanced mathematical techniques but also applying it to questions of social conflict and access fine. And that's, that's a new kind of theory. I mean, neither transportation planners nor models. No anthropologist, you know, typically build this kind of theory so any reflections on how this actually works in practice what your experiences like and how we try to bring this these ways of knowing and doing into this move. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question. Yeah, it's like you take the, the, the, the local experience, build the theory but the other challenges, try to take that, that theory to the ground. And that brings you like a lot of new challenges that that many times you don't expect, you know, let me, let me give you an example that is in fact in the MOOC. 12 years ago, we developed this very fancy model econometric model for the utility company in Colombia called EPM. So we built this model to predict water consumption in the metropolitan area of Medellin. Beautiful model. But the model use very fancy specific data. So EPM, the company was so happy using the model, but when they tried to use the model in other places, it was impossible because they don't have that quality of data in other places. Okay. So you have a really nice theory, you have a nice paper with the model but when you want to use it in other place, it doesn't work because you don't have the data. And this is something that we learned during the peak project and we tried to present those challenges in the MOOC is that we like if you want and we do that in right like in peak we develop a new model, a new model that doesn't require this type of data. We explore new forms of data, satellite images, for example. And we don't use econometric model, we use machine learning. And then we end building a completely new model to predict urban growth to predict water consumption that doesn't require the type of data. EPM was using during those 12 years. The result was that EPM bought that new model and is using that in Uruguay. I don't know Uruguay, you know where Uruguay is, is a very deprived region in Colombia. Of course they don't have the data, they don't have the technology, but now EPM is now can use our model there. The second example is like how you are prepared, you are well prepared with your theory, with your models, and then the pandemic come and the governor's office call you and ask you to develop, you have 36 hours to tell me whether I have to look down all the municipalities in Antioquia or not necessarily all of them. And if I don't have to close all of them, which one should I close and which ones should I leave open, you have 36 hours to answer that question. So those challenges require a perfect balance between the robust and the rigourosity of the methodology, but also you have to balance with time, with the scarcity of data. You know, and the MOOC is plenty of those examples in which the world is not perfect, you have to balance those situations and came out with good solutions for real practical problems. So we end answering that question in 36 hours and we were able to help the governor office to deal at least a little bit with the pandemic. But as a conclusion, you need to develop a whole new set of skills to be able to take the theory into the ground and make the difference and try to contribute to improve quality of life of population within the city. Aramar, I think what Juan Carlos describes, which is what you're hinting at, is that there's a part of what we're calling the disposition of peak urban actually implies a different sort of relationship between theory and practice. I mean, I think Corbusier flew over Rio de Janeiro and plan Chandigarh, one became the other by mistake. And Corbusier said, you fly, you see, you know, and you decide, right. And that's the problematic relationship between theory and practice, whereas in a sense what we're talking about in invoking a notion of translational research, translational work, is thinking about colleagues who I think all share a sense of embeddedness in context. So the operational space at which they're working involves much more of a dialogue back and forth about the relationship between theory and practice, which is why the MOOC is called working across theory and practice not from theory to practice or from practice theory, but a much more interactive relationship between the two I think. You know, that's absolutely true in the sense that you know this is what we're trying to do to be able to enable that cycling of, of, of, of knowledges and this is what we've tried to do at IHS for many years. In fact, the reason that we got into MOOCs was to be able to take this experience and reach out, hopefully, to hundreds of thousands of people who are actually experiencing this as researchers, as educators, and as practitioners, because I don't really have the opportunity because of the context that they're in. But this gives us a wonderful landscape right across the world, where, you know, we're not hiding from difficult questions, these are wicked problems. And there are sort of contextual hyper local solutions that are there, but there's also theory that sort of underpins it so I guess as we're about to close. The question that I have which might be a little naughty question is, this is probably the second MOOC that the University of Oxford has actually put together. So for an institution that sits, you know, on the top of the, the totem pole so to speak. You know, how has it been for you. Now as an anthropologist find reflecting on the process that said, what did we learn from the process of bringing together these contexts across the world, and and trying to make them accessible to to be younger and older people. And what are your kind of expectations from that as we about to close. I think more than anything I would say it is the importance of importance of trust and trust relations, and only through trust relations can we generate these forms of knowledge precisely because we know the challenges are enormous. The importance of addressing those challenges therefore becomes commensurably significant and the solution to those challenges is not going to be fine through any one location that geographically and can only be generated through much more complex of place and space and linking between the endeavors of people across the planet, I think to address problems that are locally that can only be globally sold through those sorts of collaboration that land locally sensitively. Thanks, Michael. So with that I mean for those of you who found this interesting. The massive open online course and the underlying materials that support this and support the implementation of these sort of complex questions. That sustainable development tries to address are available now and they're openly available across the world and we hope you can join us and engage with researchers and practices from four continents and we really thank the ICST for the opportunity to bring this all together. And, you know, try and engage with the question of how do we actually create these new knowledges and how do we enable education for sustainable development to become real grounded and focused on impact. So thank you so much. Very many thanks.