May East is a British/Brazilian urban ecologist, sustainability educator and social innovator. Her work spans the fields of cultural geography, music industry, and women’s studies, A UNITAR Fellow she holds a Master of Science in Spatial Planning with a specialization in the rehabilitation of abandoned villages. A PhD candidate at the University of Dundee, her current research investigates the role of women in bridging the historic urban planning gender gap in theory, policy and practice through regenerative perspectives. Her research interests, also, include nature-based solutions for urban planning and the use of regenerative design approaches for shaping eco-communities, mining cities, slums, transition and ghost towns. Currently, she is the UN House Scotland Director of Cities programme. Awards: Designated one of the 100 Global SustainAbility Leaders by Showcase Asia and ABC Carbon 2011, 2012, 2013. Women of the Decade in Sustainability and Leadership by Women Economic Forum 2019.

Tamara Egger is a PhD candidate at the Delft University of Technology. Her areas of interest have been related to the city on a human scale, social urbanism, design of inclusive public spaces, citizen participation, urban cycling, urban activism and bottom-up movements. In many of her projects she works with placemaking tools, urban art and methodologies of co-design. For several years she was part of the Urban Design Lab (UDL), a cooperation between UT Vienna and the Initiative of Emerging and Sustainable Cities of the IDB. She contributed to the development of the participatory design methodology and with the same developed urban projects in Chile, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. She has previously worked in architecture and urban planning offices in Vienna, developing urban projects of different scales. She has a master's degree in architecture and urbanism from the Technical University of Vienna.

James Ehrlich is Founder of ReGen Villages Holding, B.V. a Stanford University spin-off company formed in the EU to realize the future of living in regenerative and resilient communities, with critical life support of organic food, clean water, renewable energy and circular nutritional flows at the neighborhood scale. Mr. Ehrlich is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Stanford University School of Medicine Flourishing Project, Faculty at Singularity University, Senior Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and (Obama) White House Appointee for Regenerative Infrastructure. Mr. Ehrlich Ehrlich founded ReGen Villages as a Dutch (EU) impact-profit company in 2016, with its patented VillageOS™ operating system software to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to define, design and autonomously manage regenerative neighborhoods that promote healthy long-term outcomes for residents and wider communities. ReGen Villages are planned for global replication and scale in collaboration with established industrial partners, universities, governments and sovereign wealth and pension funds, enabling an optimistic post-COVID green transition.

I am a peace worker from Ankara, Turkey. I began my career in journalism and in 2013 I covered the Gezi Park Movement as a freelance journalist in alternative media and international press. I was a Master-student in Peace and Conflict Studies Hacettepe University's Istanbul branch from 2014 to 2017, where I was taught among others by Johan Galtung, Jorgen Johansen, Stellan Vinthagen, Oliver Richmond, Norman Finkelstein, Joshua Weiss, Wolfgang Dietrich, Gal Harmat, Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen, Zeki Ergas, Tatsushi Arai and Amr Khairy Abdalla. Hacettepe University shut down the department in 2015 but I obtained a Master's degree with my thesis subject being 'Identity-based Conflicts in between Resistance Groups during the Gezi Movement'. I am currently a PhD student at University of Wuppertal and my research focuses on Inclusive Transformation of the International Community:Participation of Women with their Cultural Collective Knowledge in Sustainable and Just Urban Development Processes. In 2021 I was selected as a Right Livelihood Bonn Campus Junior Scientist and was nominated as one of 3 finalist the category Social Innovation at the German Volunteer Awards 2021. In all my works I seek to apply the idea of proceeding from Science to Practice. As an example, I developed and applied “Micro-level Peacebuilding Methods for Sustainable and Just Cities." In this context I initiated the "Creating Peace Gardens in the Urban Realm" project. (https://wiki.urban-arena.eu/Urban_Gardening_Peace_Project)As a pilot study it has been realized in Wuppertal in order to generate an in-depth, multi-faceted understanding of a complex issue in a real-life laboratory context. It was not only set up to analyse root-cause problems but also sought to propose culturally sensitive solutions by the help of peacebuilding approaches.The goal was to use "nature-based micro-level solutions" as a "new forms of dialogue method" for a just and sustainable future. In order to live inclusion, build awareness for women's empowerment, implement peacebuilding strategies, contribute to more climate justice and learn about biodiversity on a micro level, a “Peace Garden” was created in February 2020 at the Alevi Culture Centre Wuppertal. The Alevi Culture Centre is a space genuinely dedicated to persons with a specific Alevi migration background, of religious devotion. It is a space for music-making which is part of religious activity of the Alevi culture. In this location a group was formed consisting of community, locals and other international participants. Beyond the creation herbal beds and the growth of vegetables in the middle of the city, the Peace Garden aimed at and succeeded in improving a common understanding for mutual respect in relationships and taking responsibilities for upcoming generations. It resulted as an alternative education model: "out of school space" for intercultural and interreligious dialogue. I am an UrbanA Fellow and The Day of Good Life Advisory Board member.

Peter Engel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, close to the Pacific coast tide pools of which he is so fond. He received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a master’s in architecture from Columbia before heading to India to study indigenous architecture and low-cost housing. His research has been supported by Columbia University, the Fulbright Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Graham Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and other institutions. Engel’s international work includes serving as Regional Habitat Advisor for South and Southeast Asia for the child-focused NGO Plan International. For Plan and other organizations, he designed preschools in the Philippines and Japan, a peace center (with Cheryl Perko) in Sri Lanka, and affordable housing and other projects in the U.S. He currently works for the architectural firm Hibser Yamauchi, specializing in public schools, and teaches at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The forms and patterns of the natural world have deeply influenced his work both as an architect and as an origami designer. The author of three books of original paperfolding designs, he has exhibited at the Asian Art Museum and de Young Museum in San Francisco and has lectured widely in the U.S. and Japan.

I am an urban planner and geographer by training. I graduated from the Department of City and Regional Planning (with a minor degree in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing) at Middle East Technical University, completed my MSc in Urban Planning and Policy at Politecnico di Milano; and MA in Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield. I received a PhD in Economic Geography on the topic of 'Dynamics and Drivers of Turkish Regional Development' from the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Prof Michael Taylor and Prof John Bryson. I took up researcher and lectureship positions at the University of Birmingham, University of Aberdeen, University of Bristol and Oxford Brookes University before taking up my current position in the Department of Management in the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology in October 2017.

Majid Eskafi is Postdoctoral Associate in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iceland. Dr. Eskafi received his Ph.D. from the University of Iceland. The principal focus of his research is Sustainable and Adaptive Port Planning.