Nicolas J.A. Buchoud is the President of the Grand Paris Alliance for Metropolitan Development, an award-winning and collaborative think-tank. He is also the co-owner of Renaissance Urbaine, the strategic advisory consultancy he established in 2006. He has served as senior advisor to the President of Paris Ile de France Region and has served in several public positions. He is the editor of The Smart Cities We Need Manifest, launched in 2016, edited in Russian and to be released in Arabic in partnership with Université Hassan II in Casablanca in 2017. He holds a Masters degree in public administration (Sciences Po Paris), a Masters degree in urban and regional planning (Sciences Po Paris) and a Masters degree in XVIIth Century Chinese History (Paris La Sorbonne). He serves as a member of the post Habitat III General Assembly of Partners (GAP), the Global Planners Network (GPN) and of the Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau und Landesplanung (DASL). He also leads the interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Research and the Anthropocene (CUR) at the federal Tomsk State University in Siberia.