Andrew Altman is the Chief Executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company in London. Previously, he was Deputy Mayor of Philadelphia having served for five years as the planning director for Washington D.C. under Mayor Anthony A. Williams, and as the first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation that was founded to guide the ambitious regeneration of the capital's waterfront. This project has been recognised as one of the boldest and most innovative planning initiatives currently in the United States. Altman is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution where he will serve as a principal researcher and advisor to the Metropolitan Policy Program. At Brookings he will work closely with Bruce Katz on the development of a new transformative agenda for cities. Altman has been the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Lady Davis Fellowship at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Altman holds a Masters in City Planning from M.I.T.

Klaus Bode is founding partner of the London-based BDSP Partnership of environmental engineers. Bode studied building engineering at the University of Bath and worked for Sir William Halcrow & Partners, K-Konsult and Roger Preston & Partners with whom he was project engineer on Foster&Partners' Commerzbank, and on Rogers Partnership and Renzo Piano Building Workshop's Potsdamer Platz developments in Berlin.

Sophie Body-Gendrot is a Professor of political science and of American studies, the Director of the Center of Urban Studies at Université-Sorbonne-Paris IV and a CNRS researcher. She sits on the French National Police.Civilian Review Commission. For several years, she chaired a European network on the dynamics of violence in 18 European countries and another on interpersonal violence and was the editor in chief of the French Review of American studies. She is currently co-chairing a European network on fear of crime with Prof. A. Crawford (U. of Leeds) and sits on several boards related to urban research (French National Prize of Urbanism; editorial board of Urbanism, etc.). Specializing in cross-national comparisons on urban violence and security, her research focuses also on the role of the state and public policies, social efficiency, the built environment, citizen participation and inclusive cities. Her most recent books (in English) are: A City of One's Own (Ashgate, 2009); Violence in Europe (co-ed. P. Spierenburg, New York Springer, 2007); The Social Control of Cities: A Comparative Perspective (Blackwell, 2000), Social Capital and Social Citizenship (co-ed M. Gittell, Lexington MA, 2003 and (in French) Sortir des banlieues. La tyrannie des territories (Paris, 2007). La ville et l'urbain. L'état des savoirs, (co-ed. T. Paquot, M. Lussault) Paris La découverte (2003). La société américaine après le 11 septembre (Paris, 2002); Villes: la fin de la violence (Paris, 2001 transl. in Chinese in 2009). Her forthcoming book called Fear in the Global City will be published by Palgrave. A frequent visiting scholar at New York University, she has published over 100 articles in Europe and in the US.

Dr Lindsay Bremner is a Professor of Architecture in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA, where she teaches architectural design and theory of design. She was formerly Head of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She holds a Dr of Science in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand. Bremner has written and lectured extensively on the transformation of Johannesburg since the end of apartheid, including the book Johannesburg: One City Colliding Worlds (2004) and Writing the City into Being: Johannesburg 1998 - 2008 (forthcoming, 2010). Her current research is on the Indian Ocean, examining instances of territorial mutation as indexes of wider environmental, geopolitical and economic processes.

Richard Brown's work covers urban governance, urban regeneration and planning, with a focus on developing partnerships and strategies for complex urban change programmes. His clients and collaborators have included the UK Government, Greater London Authority and London School of Economics.

Richard is currently working for the Olympic Park Legacy Company, but has previously run his own consultancy practice and worked for the Mayor of London: setting up the Mayor's office, working as private secretary to London Mayor Ken Livingstone and setting up the Mayor's Architecture and Urbanism Unit, as well as leading the GLA's work on the London 2012 bid. Richard has also undertaken research and published reports on urban regeneration and local political governance. He has degrees from the universities of Oxford and London.

Amanda Burden, Chair of the New York City Planning Commission, received the prestigious Design Patron award at the 2004 National Design Awards at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Prior to her appointment as Chair, Burden was a member of the City Planning Commission, Director of Planning at the Center for Court Innovation, Coordinator for Planning and Development at the Midtown Community Court Project, Vice President of Planning and Design at the Battery Park City Authority, and Vice President of Architecture and Design at the NYS Urban Development Corporation. An urban planner and civic activist, Burden is an honorary member of the AIA, American Institute of Architects, and a member of the AICP, the American Institute of Certified Planners. Burden received a BA at Sarah Lawrence College and an MS in Urban Planning at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture.

Fabio Casiroli, born in Milan in 1950, is a freelance specialist who has been working in the field of territorial and transport planning since 1975. He’s been a contract professor in Transport Planning since 1998 in the Faculty of Civil Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan after teaching experiences in Cagliari, Palermo and Venice. He has participated in research projects for universities, CNR (Research National Centre), European Union and Banco Interamericano de Desarollo. He has worked in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia on studies, plans and projects on both an urban and a regional scale. He has led or been the specialist consultant on the design of dozens of urban traffic plans as well as specialist studies for regional and provincial transport plans, railway and subway systems, goods hubs, road and motorway infrastructures, traditional and innovative transport services. From several years he’s providing specialist consultancy for some of the most notable contemporary architects on large projects in Italy and abroad. He was responsible at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2006 for the sections “Mobility”, where he presented studies on 12 world megacities, and “Europe Networks”. He’s member of the Mo.Ve. (Mobility Venice) Scientific Committee and of the Macro Town Planning Laboratory of the Milan Polytechnic. He’s member of the Advisors Team for the London School of Economics, Urban Age Program, and Le Grand Paris Team. Recently he published the books “Europe of Cities, Europe of Regions” and “Khrόnopolis, accessible city, feasible city”.

José Castillo is a practicing architect and urbanist living and working in Mexico City. He is the principal and founder alongside Saidee Springall of arquitectura 911sc, an independent architectural and urban practice. Among their built works are the expansion of the Spanish Cultural Center in the Historic Center of Mexico City and the new campus for the CEDIM school of architecture and design in Monterrey. Their urban planning work, includes various transportation corridors in the metropolitan area of Mexico City and, along Arup and Javier Sanchez, a 55-hectare master plan for the former railyards of Pantaco, Mexico City. Recently, arquitectura 911sc was awarded the first prize in the public competition for a new Performing Arts Center in Guadalajara, Mexico. Construction for the 3-theater facility will start late 2010. Castillo's work and writings have appeared in several publications including Praxis Journal, Bomb, Arquine, AD, Architectural Record, 2G, AV Proyectos, and Domus as well as in the Book The Endless City, published by Phaidon. He is a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana's School of Architecture in Mexico City and at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design. Since 2005, Castillo has curated various exhibitions including participations at the Rotterdam, Venice, São Paulo and Canary Island Biennales. Recently arquitectura 911sc was selected as the curators of the Mexican Pavillion for the Venice Biennale 2010.

Xiangming Chen is the Founding Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies and Paul Raether Distinguished Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, as well as Visiting Professor in the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He co-authored The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Blackwell Publishers, 2003; Chinese edition, 2005), published As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim (Rowman&Littlefield, 2005), and edited and contributed to Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity (the University of Minnesota Press, 2009; Chinese edition, 2009). His articles have appeared in such urban studies journals as City&Community, Cities, Environment and Planning A, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Affairs Review, Urban Geography, Urban Studies, and over a dozen edited books. He has recently served on the Editorial Board of City&Community and is currently on the International Advisory Board of Journal of Borderlands Studies.

The work of Charles Correa covers a wide range, from the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial at the Sabarmati Ashram, to the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, and the State Assembly for Madhya Pradesh - as well as housing projects and townships in Delhi, Bombay, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. He was Chief Architect for 'Navi Mumbai' the new city of 2 million people, across the harbour from Bombay, and in 1985 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed him Chairman of the National Commission on Urbanisation.

He has taught at universities both in India and abroad, including Harvard, Penn, and Cambridge (UK), and is at present Farwell Bemis Professor at MIT. He has received numerous honours and awards, including an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Michigan (1980), the RIBA Gold Medal (1984), the UIA Gold Medal (1990), the Praemium Imperiale of Japan (1994), and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (1998) and the Padma Vibhushan (2004) from the President of India.

Frank Duffy co-founded DEGW, a multi-disciplinary ‘space planning’ firm in London in 1973. DEGW now has offices throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Duffy believes in research in the context of practice. Trained as an architect, he continues to rely on the social sciences to develop the methodologies that DEGW uses to enable clients to make more efficient, more effective, and more expressive use of workspace. He is a prolific writer and has taken a leading role in the debate about the future of the architectural profession. Now in DEGW’s London office, Duffy was based in DEGW's New York office from 2001 to 2004 when he was also Visiting Professor at MIT. Besides a great deal of urban and interior design, DEGW architectural projects include the Camelia Botnar Laboratories at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital (1996), a major extension to and refurbishment of the Boots' headquarters in Nottingham (1998) and a large new office building in Dublin for Treasury Holdings. Consulting assignments include work for the BBC, BP, The Design Museum, Google, HM Treasury, Microsoft, MOD and The British Museum. Duffy chairs the BBC’s Architecture Design and Workplace Advisory Council and the Stratford City Design Review Panel. He was President of the RIBA from 1993 to 1995 and was awarded a CBE in 1997. In 2004 he was given the British Council for Offices (BCO) President's Award for a unique contribution to the art and science of office design.

Gerald Frug is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School, he worked as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in Washington, DC, and as Health Services Administrator of the City of New York. In 1974 he began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, before joining the Harvard law faculty in 1981. Jerry's specialty is local government law. He has published dozens of articles on the topic and is the author, among other works, of a casebook on Local Government Law, 5th edition (with Richard Ford and David Barron, 2010), City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation (with David Barron 2008), Dispelling the Myth of Home Rule (with David Barron and Rick Su, 2004), and City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls, (1999).

Professor Hermann Knoflacher holds the chair in Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering at the University of Technology in Vienna. He has a civil engineering and a natural science degree as well as a PhD in Transportation Engineering from the University of Vienna. In 1968 Knoflacher established the Institute of Transport Science, in the Austrian Transport Safety Board which carried out studies on transportation planning, traffic safety and human behaviour. He headed the institute until 1985. In 1971 he established a consultancy company, which has completed over 250 research projects as well as carrying out a range of transport plans for Austrian cities and regions, and national and international bodies. He has taught at the University of Technology in Vienna since 1972 and was Guest Professor at universities in Europe, Japan and in the US. He was also advisor to the Minister of Transport for over eight years. He was member of the advisory groups for the EU Commission for Telematics in the 4. FP and for Intrermodality and Sustainable Mobility in the 5. FP. Member and Chairman of Road Research working Groups of the OECD and PIARC, expert for the WHO. He is member of the European Academy for Science an Art, Chairman of the Club of Vienna and member of many international and national research and science organizations. Hermann is the author of over 500 scientific publications on transport planning, traffic safety and transport policy. He was the author of Harmonie von Stadt und Verkehr (Harmony between City and Transport), Landschaft ohne Autobahnen ((Landscape without Motorways), Stehzeuge, Der Stau ist kein Verkehrsporblem (Congestion is not a Transport Problem) and co author of Handbuch der Verkehrspoltik (The Transport Policy Handbook) and Generalverkehrsplanug und Verkehrsinfrastrukturplanung (General Traffic Planning and Infrastructure Planning). His main research fields are human behaviour in the artificial environment, the effects of technical modified structures on individual and social habits, effects of technical artefacts on deep-rooted evolutionary levels on human behaviour.

Rem Koolhaas founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He graduated at the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 published Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections between contemporary society and architecture. He is heading the work of OMA and AMO, the conceptual branch of OMA focused on social, economical and technological developments and exploring territories beyond architectural and urban concerns. Rem Koolhaas is a professor at Harvard University where he conducts the Project on the City.

Dieter Läpple is Professor of Urban and Regional Economics and Director of the Institute for'Urban and Regional Economics and Sociology at the HafenCity University Hamburg. He has worked as Lecturer and Visiting Professor in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Aix-en-Provence/Marseille and Leiden, among other places. He is a full member of the German Academy for Urban and Regional Planning, Vice-president of Salzburg Congress on Urban Planning and Development as well as being a member of several international research networks. Läpple was appointed as Urban Expert on Labour Market of the Urban Age Programme. His current research focuses on the restructuring of the economic bases of cities and regions, the global-local-interplay, the urban labour markets and urban time-space configurations.

Guy Nordenson, Professor at Princeton University, began his career as a structural engineer drafting for Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi. In 1987 he established the New York office of Ove Arup & Partners, where he was a director until 1997, when he began his current practice. Nordenson was the structural engineer for the Museum of Modern Art expansion in New York, the Jubilee Church in Rome, the Simmons Residence Hall at MIT in Massachusetts, the Disneyland Parking Structure in California, the Santa Fe Opera House, and over 100 other projects. Recently completed projects include two pedestrian bridges for Yale University, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York with SANAA, and the expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City with Steven Holl Architects. Nordenson is active in earthquake engineering. He was the editor of Tall Buildings (MoMA 2003) and Seven Structural Engineers-The Felix Candela Lectures (MoMA 2008), and a co-author of On the Water | Palisade Bay (Hatje Cantz Verlag/MoMA 2010). In 2009 he was named the William A Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome, was a recipient of the AIA's 2009 Institute Honors for Collaborative Achievement Award, and also was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Enrique Norten is an architect and currently holds the Miller Chair of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is the founder of TEN Arquitectos, and has worked extensively in Mexico City and New York. He has received the Mies van der Rohe Award, a Gold Medal from the Society of American Registered Architects, and the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts by the World Cultural Council, along with numerous other honours. He has held the O’Neal Ford Chair in Architecture at the University of Texas, Austin, and the Lorch Professor of Architecture Chair at the University of Michigan. He was Professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Norten has served on numerous award juries including for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition in New York City, and the Holcim Award.

Enrique Peñalosa has worked in government, academia and the public sector. As Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, between 1998 and 2001, he led a profound transformation of the city, giving it a different vision which was adopted by its citizens. He discarded elevated motorway proposals and instead restricted private car use and implemented TransMilenio, the world's most successful bus-based transit system. He banned cars from pavements and constructed and reconstructed hundreds of kilometres of them. He also conceived and created an extensive network of protected bicycle-paths and greenways as well as the 23-kilometre long Porvenir Promenade through Bogotá's poor Southwest. Peñalosa implemented a massive slum improvement programme, prioritizing children, with quality nurseries, schools, libraries and parks. Bogotá's city centre was reborn with plazas, the transformation of Jimenez avenue into a lively pedestrian space and the new Third Millenium 23-hectare park, which replaced a crime-ridden dilapidated area. He also initiated creative social exercises such as an annual Car Free Day. Following his term as Mayor, Peñalosa became a visiting scholar at New York University and has done extensive lecturing and consulting on urban planning and management throughout the world.

He is currently the Co-President of the Green Party in Colombia and President of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

He holds a BA from Duke University, a Masters from the IIAP in Paris and a DESS from the University of Paris 2.

Anne Power is Professor of Social Policy at the LSE. In 1997, Anne became Deputy Director of LSE's Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE). She is a member of the UK government's Neighbourhood, Cities and Regions Analysis Panel and of the Sustainable Development Commission. She is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in the United States of America, and with Bruce Katz is developing a Europe-wide and American network of Weak Market Cities, aiming to help regenerate urban communities in a more sustainable way. Her books and publications include: One size doesn't fit all (2002); Estates on the Edge (1999); The Slow Death of Great Cities? Urban abandonment or urban renaissance (with Katharine Mumford 1999); Jigsaw Cities: Big Places, Small Spaces (with John Houghton 2007) and City Survivors (forthcoming).

Saskia Sassen is now the Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University after a decade at the University of Chicago and London School of Economics. Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2006) and A Sociology of Globalization. (Norton 2007). She has now completed for UNESCO a five-year project on sustainable human settlement for which she set up a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries; it is published as one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net ]. Her books are translated into sixteen languages. She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, the Financial Times, among others.

Richard Sennett is a sociologist and the School Professor of Social and Cultural Theory at the LSE and Bemis Professor of Social Sciences at MIT. His research interests include the relationship between urban design and urban society, urban family patterns, the urban welfare system, the history of cities and the changing nature of work. He has served as a consultant on urban policy to the Labour party and is a frequent commentator in the press. His books include The Culture of the New Capitalism, (Yale, 2006), Respect in an Age of Inequality, (Penguin, 2003), The Corrosion of Character (1998), The Fall of Public Man (1996), Flesh and Stone (1994). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Society of the Arts, and the Academia Europea. He is past President of the American Council on Work and the former Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. Sennett was closely involved in the Mayors' Institute in the USA which has inspired the European Mayors' Conference organized by the LSE Cities Programme.

Recent Honors and Awards include: The Tessenow Prize, 2009; The Gerda Henkel Prize, 2008; The European Craft Prize, 2008 ; The Hegel Prize, Germany, 2006; Helen and Robert Lynd Award for Sociology, American Sociological Association, 2004; Rothermere Lectures, Oxford University, 2004; Castle Lectures, Yale University, 2004; Honorary Doctorate, Loyola University, 2003; The Berlin Prize for Sociology, 2001; The Amalfi Prize for European Sociology, 1999; The Friedrich Ebert Award for Sociology, 1999

Edward Soja is Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and Centennial Professor of Sociology at LSE. His interests have focussed on making connections between the spatial disciplines of geography, architecture and urban and regional studies, and in promoting a critical spatial perspective in the social sciences and humanities. Concentrating in particular on Los Angeles, he has published widely on processes of urban restructuring and the transformation of the modern metropolis. His most recent research has ranged from developing new approaches to regional governance in Catalonia to studies of labour-community-university coalition building and what he describes as the search for spatial justice. His major books include Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (1986), Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996), and Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (2000).

Deyan Sudjic is Director of the Design Museum in London. Founded in 1989, the Design Museum is the UK’s cultural champion of design and has won international acclaim for exhibitions of modern design history and contemporary design. Before joining the Design Museum in August 2006, Deyan was Dean of the Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design at Kingston University, Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art, and the Observer design and architecture writer. He was Director of Glasgow 1999, UK City of Architecture and in 2002 he was Director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, which attracted more than 100,000 paying visitors for the first time in its history. Deyan was for several years Visiting Professor at the Academy of Applied Art in Vienna, running a course in Design History and Theory. From 2000 to 2004 he was Editor of Domus, the international magazine of art, architecture and design, and he was Founding Editor of Blueprint magazine from 1983 to 1996. Deyan has published many books on design and architecture, including monographs on the work of the Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo and the British-based designer Ron Arad. His most recent books are, The Edifice Complex (London 2005) and Future Systems (London, 2006). Deyan was appointed as a CABE commissioner in March 2006. In 2004 he was awarded the Bicentenary Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for the promotion of design, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was made an OBE in 2000.

Dr Geetam Tiwari is TRIPP Chair and Associate Professor for Transport Planning Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP), Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, with a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her professional experience is in the areas of transport planning, traffic engineering and safety. Teaching at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi since 1990, she has published over 60 research papers on transportation planning and safety and has edited four books. Tiwari received the Stockholm Partnerships Award for local impact, innovative thinking and a potential for replication or transferability for TRIPP. In 2002, she received the Center for Excellence grant from Volvo Research and Education Foundation, Sweden for Sustainable transport in Less Motorised Countries. She has been an invitee in the Urban Age conference series by London School of Economics 2005-2006 and Principal Voices programme on urbanization sponsored by CNN-Time and Shell company in 2006.

Tony Travers is Director of the Greater London Group, a research centre at the London School of Economics. He is also Expenditure Advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills, a Senior Associate at the King's Fund and a member of the Arts Council of England's Touring Panel. He was, from 1992-1997, a Member of the Audit Commission and has worked for a number of other Parliamentary select committees. Travers was a member of the Working Group on Finance, Urban Task Force in 1998-1999. He has published a number of books on cities and government, including, Paying for Health, Education and Housing, How does the Centre Pull the Purse Strings (with Howard Glennerster and John Hills) (2000) and, most recently, The Politics of London: Governing the Ungovernable City (2004).

Lawrence Vale is Ford Professor Urban Design and Planning and was Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at M.I.T. from 2002-2009. He holds degrees from Amherst College, M.I.T., and the University of Oxford. Vale is the author or editor of six books examining urban design and housing. These include Architecture, Power, and National Identity (winner of the 1994 Spiro Kostof Book Award for Architecture and Urbanism from the Society of Architectural Historians), From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (2001 "Best Book in Urban Affairs" Award from the Urban Affairs Association), and Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods (2005 Paul Davidoff Book Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning). He is also Co-Editor, with Sam Bass Warner, Jr., of Imaging the City (2001), and co-editor, with Thomas J. Campanella, of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Anthony A. Williams is Chief Executive Officer of Primum Public Realty Trust, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group, Inc. He co-founded Primum Public Realty Trust in 2007 with FBR as a real estate entity focused on buying and leasing back government and not-for-profit real estate. Prior to joining FBR, Mr. Williams served two terms as the fourth Mayor of the District of Columbia from January 1999 through December 2006. While in office, Mayor Williams was elected president of the Washington, DC-based National League of Cities in December 2004. Anthony Williams served as the District of Columbia Chief Financial Officer (CFO) from October 1995 through June 1998. As CFO and Mayor, he led the District to financial recovery. Williams restored fiscal accountability for District agencies and balanced the city's budget. His work put the city on track for the return to self-government—two years earlier than projected—and delivered a surplus of $185 million in fiscal year 1997. Prior to serving as Mayor, Mr. Williams was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the first CFO for the US Department of Agriculture as well as a founder and Vice Chairman of the U.S. CFO Council. He served as the Deputy State Comptroller of Connecticut, where he was responsible for the management of 250 separate funds and the state's budget and accounting services. In 1997, Governing Magazine named him Public Official of the Year. He is also on the award jury for the 2007 Opus Prize.

Alejandro Zaera Polo studied at the E.T.S. of Architecture in Madrid and received a masters (MARCHII) degree from Harvard Graduate school of Design in 1991. Together with Farshid Moussavi he founded Foreign Office Architects in 1992. FOA is an international practice of architecture and urban design, dedicated to the exploration of contemporary urban conditions, lifestyles and construction technologies. Projects realized include the Yokohama International Port Terminal in Japan, and the Barcelona Forum Park in Spain. Besides his architectural work Alejandro is currently the Dean of the Berlage Institute and lectures at several architectural schools around the world. His critical and theoretical work has been published in international magazines and a recent monograph on the work of the practice has appeared as part of the 2G series, a major publication on the Yokohama Terminal has been published by Actar.