Thank you, Tim. At the risk of repetition, I'd like to say a very warm welcome, especially to those many of you who've traveled from afar, and particularly the 63 of you from 15 countries on five continents who are here as family and friends to support the graduating class. Many of you will have come from cities, and almost certainly like all of us, we take the city for granted. But the city didn't happen by accident; it's an act of design, and it's been described as society's greatest invention. And the data shows that the quality of urban life in a time of global warming, that the city is also the key to those environmental challenges. And cities are not static; they're not in aspic. They're dynamic, they're changing, they're changing according to crisis, they're responding, they bounce back stronger. They're responding to population growth that requires decisions at every twist and turn, long-term decisions and short-term decisions. Trends: what kind of trends do we encourage, what kind of trends in cities do we discourage? So to try to bring that to life, one example, one of many. You could simplistically say there are two kinds of cities: there are those cities which are born out of a historic tradition, they're compact, they're walkable, they're characterized by historic core, by neighborhoods with a mixture of uses, which were like you walk out of the front door here and of course you're right in the heart of that kind of city. Of course there's another kind of city which is about the car, car-born, relatively recent, and that could be Los Angeles, it could be a suburb of Madrid which has not learned those lessons. So those two kinds of cities: the sprawling car-born, the compact walkable friendly neighborhood. If we look at those in terms of the data of energy and pollution, the compact city is half the carbon footprint of the sprawling city. If you put all that aside and you say let's listen to the popular vote, you look at any kind of survey, the top 10 on three continents consistently by any kind of survey, the compact city is where people want to visit and where they want to settle down. And again, if you put all that to one side and you look at the data in terms of longevity, what are the factors that in terms of health, what kind of urbanity would be a healthy city? Well, exercise is one of three key indicators; the other is the social dimension, loneliness is the killer, and of course diet. So two out of those three favor the compact city. So when that comes down to the political domain of governments of cities, where does that lead you? Do you encourage suburbs or do you encourage neighborhoods? Do you encourage roads or do you encourage high quality public transport? Do you give priority to pedestrians over cars? Do you plant trees or do you roll out asphalt? Now all of that might seem obvious to those of us here in this room, but it really is not that simple. For example, the UK government, the last UK government, despite one department about leveling up between the rich South and the poor North, high-speed train it was cancelled and instead building roads, which is really why we're all here today. Because the graduating class who've been immersed in these issues will, as influencers in the future, be using data and facts rather than fashion and prejudice. And I really would like to congratulate the class. I've been hugely impressed as over the year as it's involved, I've seen the way in which you've grasped, embraced, and pioneered the idea of a groundbreaking course that is rooted in expert knowledge, academia, but is also about action on the ground in terms of cities. So I look forward to hearing how you've tackled social exclusion in a city, the way in which you reexamined mobility, the way in which in a holistic way guided by United Nations sustainability goals, the way in which you've seen the relationship in one city between planting trees, mobility, land use, and the way in which you've used the new digital technology which is in relative infancy as a design tool. But perhaps new and uncharted is the way in which you can simulate the anticipatory effects of design changes to improve the quality of urban life, to reduce a carbon footprint. Uncharted territory is how such digital tools could enable a much better bottom-up approach in terms of community involvement. And perhaps there is a connection there with the tragic events that we've all witnessed in Valencia. And it's interesting perhaps in terms of the lessons of history that the older residents in the V that was at the epicenter of that deluge and killed so many people would recall a less devastating but at the time equally traumatic 1957 flood. And they recalled that perhaps it reminded everybody the importance of not building unknown flood plains and the importance of the community voice. Because what happened in the aftermath of that flood was that there was a big debate, and one contender for change was to drive a highway through the city. But the citizens rose up and demanded that there was a response to the flood. The result of that is something which is now taken for granted: they diverted the river Turia and they created a new green lung which is the cultural heart of Valencia. And interestingly, that intervention saved many lives because that part of Valencia was protected. So it's a reminder of the critical importance of the renewal of cities, the importance of infrastructure. And I've described infrastructure as long-term planning; it's an investment in future generations. And that of course brings us full circle because today is about the younger generations and the way in which they could be empowered to influence generations positively in the future. Thank you.
