Francesco Bandarin is the Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO, formerly the Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the Secretary of the World Heritage Committee. He is trained as an Architect (Venice 1975) and Urban Planner (UC Berkeley 1977) and has pursued an academic career as Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Venice (IUAV) and a professional career as consultant for international organizations in the field of urban conservation and development. He has been actively involved in the Venice Safeguarding Project and in the preparation of Rome for the year 2000 Jubilee. As Director of the World Heritage Centre he has promoted the revision of the UNESCO recommendation on historic cities and has contributed to development of the debate on the role of contemporary architecture in historic cities, on the management of their social and physical changes and on the role of communities in the conservation of historic values. Ron van Oers is Programme Specialist for Culture at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, where he coordinates the World Heritage Cities Programme. He is trained as an Urban Planner and received his doctorate (PhD) from Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) on a research into the principles of Dutch colonial town planning (published as book). At the WH Centre in Paris he has worked in a variety of positions, advising national governments, local communities and NGO's on all continents on both overall strategy and site-specific projects of heritage management. He is the Founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (JCHMSD), published by Emerald Group Publishing (UK) anda Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Change Over Time: International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, published by Penn Press, University of Pennsylvania's School of Design (USA).