Douglas Webster is Professor of East Asian Urbanization at Arizona State University. He holds a PhD in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held academic positions worldwide, including the University of British Columbia, Stanford University, Utrecht University, and the University of Calgary (where he directed the urban planning program). He is currently Visiting Professorship at the Institute for Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Science. He was Senior Advisor to the National Planning Agency of Thailand from 1993–2004. A former World Bank staff member, he has been advisor to the World Bank on East Asian urbanization processes since the 1990s. He has been involved with Chinese urban development since 1992, and is currently completing a book on, China: The Urban Difference with Professor Cai Jianming. His interests in Chinese urbanization focus on the relationship between rapid economic structural change and city building processes, including economic cluster formation and industrial zone development. Professor Webster is familiar with Harbin and the Ha-Da-Qi Corridor, having worked on strategic planning for the Corridor and its cities in 2006 and 2007, as part of the World Bank / Cities Alliance City Development Strategy Program. In China, Professor Webster is a frequent advisor to the World Bank and the innovator property developer, Shui On Land. He has held research grants for work on Chinese urbanization from the Ford Foundation, the research arm of the World Bank, the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, the Chinese Academy of Science, etc. He is author of over 150 publications, primarily on East Asian city building, competitiveness, and sustainability.