 So four years ago, I moved to the city of Dubai and it was a very exciting prospect I was about to join a new sustainability movement in a place that is not Comely known for being sustainable and help green the built environment there So a warrior really and the day I moved to Dubai my excitement was taken to a whole different level Basically, I realized that that's because huge in front of us If you see if you see Dubai before you probably see that it's a very modern city With the best standard of living people seem happy more or less And but at the same time everything is so huge the roads are massive. They're difficult to walk There's very little sense of community. They're glass building and greenery and water fountains everywhere and we are in the desert They're doing the indoors were freezing whilst the outdoors are very hot and all these contracts obviously camera price You know, it's this kind of development and this kind of growth came With a reliance on fossil fuel energy with deep extraction of natural resources like water, etc And well if we compare that to the older cities in the desert We can see that there are quite differences there, you know, these are cities that were built decades ago maybe hundred years ago with The principles of I have some local resources. I have to use them So different people done different things in Tunisia and Matmata for example people dug holes in the ground to create housing In other places like Petra in Jordan, they carved the side of mountains to create beautiful cities Or simply they invented the brick like the cities in of Yemen where they were able to build, you know high-rise towers and regardless of the settlement they decided to use They had to resolve three main design problems The first one was I have to shelter from the elements extreme temperatures wind conditions dust solar radiation I have to also Make sure I foster interaction between people and grow this economic activity that can happen in a city and Obviously do all this with a minimum use of resources or the most efficient way The most efficient way of using resources that are available locally. So they were smart. They come up with ideas first They invented intricate pathways that are usually shaded most of the time. So it's more comfortable for the four pedestrians They used thick walls that with high thermal mass that keep the space cool during the day and warmer at night When the desert is very cold They also invented the oldest form of air conditioning systems in the Arabian Peninsula called the barge or the wind tower and Every time they use greenery they had to use it for a meaningful purpose like Growing food or creating shade and these concepts are concepts that we can still use today We can actually engineer them for them advance them further to get more energy efficiency more water conservation and our building more Livability because at the end of the day our cities are there Not just to be better for the environment are for people and for economic growth, etc To be more sustainable and that's the kind of thinking we're trying to have as sustainability Consultant designers engineers architects in the region and elsewhere We're trying to think about how can we do more with less and the nice thing is is that in our region? We're starting to see some good examples modern example that is The first one I would like to mention is the new progressive Sustainable urban policies that were developed by the government of Abu Dhabi that are reshaping the neighborhoods a bit differently Their neighbor has now where we can walk easily in the shade where we have different pocket parks, etc Where people can interact where we have a true sense of community and complete communities where? The facilities are closer to us and we can have access to them Easily they also develop a program called esti Dhamma for rating the performance of buildings from the worst to the best and So that they can encourage better performance or environmental performance of these buildings So we should expect also less use of resources energy water materials, etc And we started seeing some examples or so built here the example of master city where? all these all the Ideas like the wind tower you see there on left and the musher be a system for windows are being used now in modern Sitting a setting, but they also using solar energy They doing calculations optimizing the performance and it's really exciting to see these kind of examples We're actually on our path to developing better cities better buildings better neighborhoods Because it's very important if we can make it work in the desert it can work everywhere else. Thank you