Stefan Rau, educated in Stuttgart, Bonn and Chicago is registered as urban planner and architect in Germany. He is director of the planning practice Metropolitan Synergies in Shanghai. He is a consultant to various institutions and governments predominantly in China. He is Guest Professor at Lanzhou University of Technology and is a frequent lecturer at several Chinese universities. He has published a number of articles and is a frequent speaker at international and Chinese urban planning conferences focusing on comprehensive urban eco-efficiency and aspects of its spatial integration in planning, environmental and city design.

Stefan’s international project experience covers works in Germany and Central Europe, North America, East- and South-East Asia. His previous engagements include being senior planner in offices of SOM Chicago/Shanghai, HOK Hongkong/Shanghai, Murphy/Jahn Chicago/Berlin. Project involvements include large-scale, long-term strategic plans. Project planning work in urban and environmental design has been emphasizing the interdisciplinary integration of urban design. Project types include walkable, high density mixed-use urban districts served by public transit, residential areas integrating ecological infrastructures, industrial parks integrating process chains to promote industrial synergies, waterfront developments, urban revitalization, eco-tourism zones and resorts, green city parks and eco-efficient new towns as well as environmental assessment and implementation policies such as zoning reform.

Stefan has been promoting several initiatives with Chinese institutions and governments on eco-efficiency standardization and urbanization management. These include upgrading rural areas, urban and rural integration, strategic strengthening of emerging third-tier metropolises in central China and the proposal of a large scale system of national parks to balance and guide urbanization in the world’s most populated region of the China Coast.

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Oscar Bragos is an architect and urban planner in Argentina. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of Rosario. After his studies in Brazil he received his M.Sc. degree in Town and Regional Planning. He obtained his doctorate degree in Architecture in Spain from the University of Valladolid. He is consultant to various municipal institutions in Argentina.

As a professor at Rosario National University, he teaches Town Planning, and he is currently in charge of research concerning urban evolution, social spatial fragmentation and urban planning in the Rosario metropolitan region. He is also president of IGC (City Management Institute), a civil organization involved in city planning and management. 

In his activity as urban planner, Oscar focuses on the resolution of current demands of economic growth with the need of social inclusion, environment and landscape protection and sustainable urban development.

Working within this scope, he has been involved in different scale projects such as long-term strategic plans and urban plans for important Argentine cities. He also worked in urban plans for tourist resorts and participated in the development of the latest urban codes in different cities.

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Jeffrey Featherstone is Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities and Professor in the Department of Community and Regional Planning (CRP) at Temple University. He served as Chair of the CRP Department from 2002 - 2006. Professor Featherstone's teaching expertise includes planning politics and administration, and environmental planning and politics, and water resources planning and management.

Dr. Featherstone, who specializes in water resources management and dispute resolution, served as a member of the Long's Peak Working Group in 1992, an advisory body to President-elect Bill Clinton on national water policy and sustainability. The group's final report, entitled: "America's Waters: A New Era of Sustainability," served as the starting point for the administration's policy and regulatory agenda.

In 1995, he served as a ranking member of the U.S. Water Resources Delegation to China, and has advised Chinese government officials on water conservation and sustainability issues. Dr. Featherstone is the former Deputy Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, a federal-interstate compact agency that manages water for 15 million people.

Dr. Featherstone has served on review boards for professional associations and he has been published in several conference proceedings or professional journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Temple University.

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Žaklina Gligorijević graduated in architecture and holds a Master of Science degree in Urbanism from Belgrade University. Žaklina gathered her professional experience in the private, NGO, and public sector and updated her academic knowledge at MIT and Harvard GSD in Cambridge, MA. She has signed various architectural and urban design competitions, projects, and plans in Serbia and Montenegro, international projects in Cyprus, Ireland, USA and Romania. She has organised international exhibitions, workshops and events linking professional associations and European cities.

Žaklina represented Belgrade in the international project “Financing Metropolitan Governments in Transitional Countries”, comparing 9 SEE Europe capital cities. She led The Natural Core of Belgrade Study, as a part of wider Belgrade Waterfront.
She is Director of the Belgrade Urban Planning Institute. While managing the Institute, she has hosted globally respected architectural and urban design names and offices in Belgrade.

She is interested in improving the local planning system in dynamic environment, in public realm, PPPs and sustainable urban rehabilitation, but also in exploring urban management, chances for the creative sector and urban recycling.

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Kavas Kapadia was educated in the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) Delhi, one of the leading educational institution of India.  Graduated as an Architect in 1969 and completed Post Graduation in Town & Country Planning in 1971.  Professional experience as an Architect in Nigeria, Iran and a brief  stint in Singapore besides working in India.  Joined the Department of Urban Planning at SPA in 1981.  He has been since involved in Planning and Architecture educate in India while developing his interest in Urban Planning.  He has taught related courses in several universities, been on selection committees and juries and served as Head of the Department and the Dean of Studies of the SPA.

Prof Kapadia has written and presented papers in India and abroad, on the theme of sustainability, urbanization, water and its cultural implications in poverty reduction in urban areas. He has worked on several groups on behalf of SPA both in actual consultancy of architecture and planning in India and collaborated with agencies abroad such as the Park Services of the US, the University of Cologne, Germany (on mega city project) the University of Kyoto (on Mumbai Disaster Mitigation) and study of the slums of Dharavi.

He has been involved extensively in the process of advising the government and the professional institutions on the issue of planning education and establish an interface between education and profession. He has been advisor to the institutions such as the All India council for technical education, Council of Architecture, Indian Institute of town planners, National Captal Region board and many private organizations dealing with planning.

Kavas Kapadia has also been associated with PARZOR foundation to document the heritage of Parsee-Zoroastrian culture a project initiated by UNESCO  and in this connection presented papers in the world water form at Kyoto and Salisbury UK, alliance of Religious Conservation, again in the field of water and culture. He is currently the Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Regional Planning and working also as an advisor to DDA on the ‘Master Plan Delhi 2021’ on how to get people to participate in urban planning.  Also a special cell to study planning for disaster mitigation  in Urban Areas is being set up under his guidance in the SPA.

He became a member of ISOCARP in 2002 and has since presented papers in the Istanbul and Porto Congresses. 

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Peter Kibinda is a registered town planner working for the Kenya government. He graduated from the University of Nairobi in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Land Economics. He was employed by the City Council of Nairobi in the same year as a Valuation Surveyor.

In 1979, he was enrolled for a Masters Degree at Nairobi University where in graduated in 1981 with an MA in Urban and Regional Planning. Peter also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Housing, Planning and Building from the International Institute for Housing Studies (Netherlands) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Urban Survey and Human Settlement from ITC-Netherlands.

In the public sector, he has worked for the City Council of Nairobi as a Town Planner where he rose through the ranks to become the Director of City Planning. With the formation of the new Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development, he was elevated to become the Director of planning and Environment for the Nairobi Metropolitan Region which covers an area of 32,000 sq kms.

In the Ministry, he has overseen the preparation of Nairobi Metropolitan Region Spatial Plan which is already finalised. In the field of spatial planning he has a bias towards human settlements and urban regeneration.

Outside the public sector, he undertakes part time lecturing at the University of Nairobi.
Peter is a fellow member of Architectural Association of Kenya and a fellow member of the Kenya Institute of Planners. He is also a board member of the Physical Planners Registration Board and a Governing Council member of Kenya Institute of Planners.

Peter is widely travelled.

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Fedor Kudryavtsev graduated from Moscow Institute of Architecture (MARHI) in 1993 with the diploma of architect and later in 1995 took a post-graduate course on urban management in the Institute of Housing and Urban development studies (IHS), Rotterdam. After working for private and state planning institutions and independent architectural practice, he has been serving as Head of the Laboratory of Urban Studies (ULab) in MARHI since 2005 and, as a practicing architect and a planner, is a partner and CEO in ArchNOVA architectural bureau.

The combination of research and design activities allowed him to use the experience and practice of very basic projects like proposals for site redevelopment, suburban areas master planning, design of  housing and commercial buildings as data for theoretical studies and conceptual research on more general subjects. Among them there are spatial self-organization of the city structure, agglomeration growth, role of international airports as new urban nodes. The latter themes were output of several research grants of Russian Fund of Basic Research and Ministry of Education he won and fulfilled with his team in 2009-2011.  As part of scientific program of ULab since 2010 he started an annual public event under the title of open discussion  to provoke professional and general public debates on urban planning problems. Two of them were already successfully held with great public interest and were focused on prospects for bicycle transport in Moscow and scenarios for Moscow agglomeration development.

Along his carreer he combines practical works with teaching and is now acting as associate professor of the Department of Urban Planning in his alma mater. He is also a coordinator of international exchange programs like the one between MARHI and La Sapienza University in Rome.  

His first experience related to ISOCARP was a participation in YPP workshop at the 37th Congress in Utrecht (2001) that followed by full society membership in 2003. Since then he has attended various ISOCARP congresses and served as chair of one of the seminars at the congress in Geneve (2004). Other activities include being a team member of the UPAT Schwechat municipality and Vienna International airport (2007) and articles and data he and his colleagues have contributed to ISOCARP publications: International Manual of Planning Practice (2008), Review 05 Low Carbon Cities (2009), Review 07 Urbanizing World, Meeting the Challenge (2012).

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Nadya Nilina is a Russian-American urban planner with the background in architecture, social sciences, city design and development. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA, she has been practicing in Europe since 2006.
Her projects include masterplans for citywide preservation and regeneration, as well as smaller projects focusing on the quality and the design of physical environment. 

Nadya Nalina is a faculty member at the MARCH School of Architecture in Moscow, Russia where she serves as a founding director of the MARCH Laboratory of Urban Planning and an "Urbanism" module leader and curriculum coordinator.

As a project leader with KCAP architects & planners, she has been involved in a number of projects in Russia, including a competition proposal for three towns in the Perm region-Berezniki, Solikamsk and Usolie.  With West 8 landscape architects and urban designers, she developed a comprehensive preservation and development plan for the city of Samarra in Iraq.

She has served as an independent consultant to UNESCO, participated in the Young Planning Professionals (YPP) workshop with ISOCARP in 2007, participated in the Urban Planning Advisory Team (UPAT) for Phillips Liveable Cities initiative in Singapore in 2011.

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Guy Vloebergh is master in urban and regional planning (master degree ARTESIS University College Institute Antwerp Belgium).
He is CEO of the private planning and design office OMGEVING cvba (www.omgeving.be) located in the city of Antwerp (Flanders/Belgium).
He is project manager and the person responsible for OMGEVING with respect to various spatial structure plans, land use plans, town planning advice, research contracts, feasibility studies, spatial strategic implementation plans and complex supervisory contracts for the Flemish municipal policy.

Since 2010 Guy Vloebergh has been working as ‘regional border manager’ for ALBERTKNOOP, a strategic cross-border project implementing the spatial implementation plan for Flanders in the border area Flanders-Netherlands (city of Maastricht).
Guy Vloebergh combines his consulting work with an education activity as professor on ‘town planning tools’ and ‘implementation tools’ in the master’s course in town planning and urban development at the ARTESIS University College Institute in Antwerp (Belgium).

Guy Vloebergh is past (and founding) president of the Flemish Association of planners (Vlaamse Vereniging voor Ruimte en Planning - VRP) from 1997 till 2001 and since January 2012 President of the National Belgian Delegation within ISOCARP.
He became member of ISOCARP in 2006 and was involved in the Local Organising Committee of the ISOCARP congress of 2007 in Antwerp.

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Wang Kai, urban planner, deputy president of China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD). Membership of Urban Planning Society of China (UPSC).

He was educated in Tongji University (urban planning degree 1986), Shanghai, Tsinghua University (MSc 1997 and Doctorate Degree 2006 ), Beijing. He is registered as urban planner in China. He was an academic visitor at the School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University.

Since 1986, he has been working on many different projects on planning. He is one of the project leaders for comprehensive plans of Beijing, Shenyang and Taiyuan, strategic development plans of Hangzhou, Xiamen and Ningbo, regional plans of Bohai Bay Area and Jiangxi Province, China Urban System Plan. He has also been involved in economic and development districts in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. He has a lot of experience in city strategy research, comprehensive plan and regional plan. 

He has also been involved in research of urbanization, city development policy, regional planning. The main research projects include: Evaluation and Prediction of the Speed and Quality of Chinese Urbanization. (The Ministry of Science and Technology, The National Major Supporting Project of the "Eleventh Five Year Plan" Period); Studies on the Planning and Construction of the Chinese Mega-City Region (Chinese Academy of Engineering);Strategies and Countermeasures of Urban Underground Space Development and Utilization in 21st Century China (Chinese Academy of Engineering).

He is actively joining different kinds of academic activities. He was the chief of Youth Working Committee of Urban Planning Society of China, and now he is the general secretary of the Regional Planning and City Economy Committee of the Urban Planning Society of China. In many projects, he has invited international experts to join, i.e. Australian experts involved in Hangzhou Strategic Plan, Ningbo and Xiamen involved British experts. 

From 2005 he has been deputy editor of the magazine Urban Planning International (UPI). He has published a lot of academic articles concerning urban development history, urbanization policy, regional planning, city development strategy and so on.

He became a member of ISOCARP in 2006. He has participated in congresses and presented papers.

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Nicole Wirz Schneider, architect and urban planner, is working at the local government of Basel-Stadt.

She studied architecture (diploma 1997) as well as spatial planning (master thesis 2005) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. By her professional career in the private and public sector she has acquired a profound knowledge in building and planning business.

Since 2005 she has been working as project manager for strategic and conceptual planning. Her site developments are mainly for public uses (master planning) as well as for a global industrial company in Basel. Furthermore she did the conceptual plan of high-rise buildings in Basel. She has good knowledge of sustainability in planning and building processes. One of her interest is developing sustainable urban design, with a special interest in the 2000 watt society. As an architect, she is member of several juries of architecture competitions for public buildings.

From 2002 to 2010 she was co-editor of the magazine Collage of the Swiss Association of Town and Regional Planners and published several magazines.

She became member of ISOCARP in 2004. Since then she has often participated in congresses and presented several papers. Currently she is Bureau Member of the Swiss National Delegation and coordinates the local members and regional activities.

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