As global population growth continues to challenge the world’s existing cities and communities, Expo 2020 Dubai brings together leaders, experts and citizens to explore how people must transform the way they move, build, consume and live in the habitats of the future. By 2050, more than 70 percent of the world’s population is forecast to live in cities, with three billion estimated to dwell in informal settlements. Urban and Rural Development Week, running this week, and held in association with Expo 2020’s Infrastructure Digitalisation Partner Siemens, UN-Habitat and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), will explore communities as building blocks of prosperity and how future habitats can be made sustainable. Harnessing knowledge from indigenous communities and how that know-how is used with new technologies to influence the design of regenerative and biodiverse global systems is under discussion today.