Anne Haila is Professor of Urban Studies, in the Department of Social Research at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She holds a doctorate in real estate economics (Helsinki University of Technology). The topic of her doctorate thesis was the theory of land rent. She has been professor of land use planning at Agricultural University of Norway, teaching for two years urban economics at the National University of Singapore, held visiting appointments at University of California Los Angeles and City University of New York, and worked one and a half years in Nordic Asian Research Institute in Copenhagen. She has been the Scientific Secretary and the Vice-President at the International Sociological Association’s (ISA) Research Committee on Urban and Regional Development (RC21), the member of editorial board of Planning Theory and Practice, Urban Studies and Urban Affairs Review, and the editor in chief of the Finnish Planning Journal.
She teaches urban studies, urban theory, comparative urban research and urban development. Her research focuses on urban development, property rights, property markets, state intervention in regulating property market, land and housing, especially the cases of Singapore, Finland, China and Hong Kong.
Prof. Harry Dimitriou is Bartlett Professor of Planning Studies at University College London (UCL) and sometime Head of the Bartlett School of Planning. He is Director of the OMEGA Centre at UCL – an international centre of excellence for the study of mega projects in transport and development funded by the Volvo Research and Education Foundations (VREF) undertaking international research into decision-making in the planning, appraisal, delivery and evaluation of mega urban transport projects in Europe, USA and the Asia Pacific.
He is member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and has been Director of Training and Development Consultants (TDC) S.A, Switzerland; of Renaissance London Ltd., UK; and of the International Institute for Energy Conservation (IIEC), USA. He was a member of the Transport Working Group for the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);
Professor Dimitriou has held numerous advisory and consultancy positions, including the World Bank Institute, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Centre of Human Settlements, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Harvard Institute for International Development, the Hong Kong Government, the Government of Indonesia, and the South East England Regional Development Agency and the London Development Agency, UK.
His principal areas of research and teaching lie in the fields of urban land-use/ transport interaction and planning, urban transport policy and sustainable development, mega transport infrastructure appraisal and planning, strategic and regional planning and institution-building for urban development and transport. Much of his work has concentrated on cities and regions in the Developing World
Ananya Roy is Professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches in the fields of urban studies and international development. She also serves as Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Most recently, Roy served as co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center.
Roy is the author of City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (Lexington Books, 2004) and co-editor of The Practice of International Health (Oxford University Press, 2008). Her book, Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (Routledge, 2010), was made possible through research supported by the National Science Foundation. This book is the recipient of the 2011 Paul Davidoff Book Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, a book award for research that advances social justice. Roy's most recent book is co-edited with Aihwa Ong and titled Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Blackwell, 2011).
Roy is currently involved in three collaborative projects of research and practice: Urban Revolutions in the Age of Global Urbanism; The 21st Century Indian City: Setting New Agendas for Policy; and Territories of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty Scholarship. She is launching a new book series with the University of California Press with a focus on global poverty and inequality. She also serves on the editorial boards of Public Culture, Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (and the Studies in Urban and Social Change book series), Planning Theory, Planning Theory and Practice, and the newly launched Territory, Politics, and Governance.
Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. He has published many papers on urban spatial structure, urban housing and land development, and is working on Chinese urbanism and urban development, urban and regional governance, urban poverty, and social spatial differentiation. He is among the top 50 most cited human geographers in the world according to Social Science Citation Index (SSCI, ‘h-index’). His research includes China’s urban development and planning and its social and sustainable challenges. He is co-editor of Restructuring the Chinese City (Routledge, 2005), Marginalization in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), International Perspectives on Suburbanization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), editor of Globalization and the Chinese City (Routledge, 2006), China’s Emerging Cities (Routledge, 2007), and co-author of Urban Development in Post-Reform China: State, Market, and Space (Routledge, 2007), and Urban Poverty in China (Edward Elgar, 2010). He has 25 years’ experience of Chinese urban system plan, urban strategic plan and master plan. He advises on urban and regional development for local government in China.
Prof. Chaolin GU is Professor of the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University and the Vice President of the Chinese Futurology Association, Councilman of Urban Planning Society of China, China Society for Urban Sciences and Geographical Association of China. In addition, he is the member of Science and Technology Committee, Ministry of Housing and Construction and the expert Panel of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Prof. Gu has been visiting scholar in Department of Geography/Planning, University of Toronto in the academic year 1992-93 and in the Center of Urban Planning & Environmental Management, Hong Kong University in 1994 and 1995. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Institute of Social and Economic Geography, Katholie University of Leuven, Belgium. He is mainly engaged in research work in urban and regional planning, regional economics, urban geography in China. Since 1986, he has published 29 monographs and more than 286 papers.
