"Some of the new inclusive approaches respond to subtleties of local culture. Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava of URBZ/User-Generated Cities are developing an action-based urbanology that values local user experience above trained expertise. [34] In Urban Typhoon workshops from Tokyo to New Delhi, local residents collectively author their urban visions with small multidisciplinary teams. The Indian Institute for Human Settlements, in consultation with MIT, Stanford and Harvard, and with design firms Arup and IDEO, is creating a new profession. “Urban practitioners” are taught interdisciplinary skills with the goal of enabling them to deal with rapid and complex urban growth — just in time, since India’s 5,000 urban centers are projected to quadruple to a staggering 20,000 cities by 2050. [35] In Mumbai, Partners for Urban Knowledge, or PUKAR, has created the Youth Fellowship Project, which democratizes research by bringing together international students with local youth, guided by the philosophy that “MBAs can learn much from rag pickers.” Using research as a transformative tool for advocacy and education, PUKAR’s “barefoot researchers” explore their own communities while breaking down class and gender barriers through student partnerships. [36]"

"Because most things are connected to most other things, to design anything effectively requires considering what it connects to."