Anthony M. Orum is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of City-Building in America (1995) and Introduction to Political Sociology (fourth edition, 2000), co-editor of The Case for the Case Study (with Joe Feagin and Gideon Sjoberg, 1991) and co-author of Changing Societies (with John Johnstone and Stephanie Riger, 1999).

Xiangming Chen is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Illinois at Chicago and Research Fellow with the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in the comparative study of cities in the global context, with a primary focus on China and East Asia. He has published numerous articles on urban studies and is the author of the forthcoming As Borders Crumble (2004) and the principal editor of the forthcoming Global Aspirations, Local Actions (2004).