Gregory Smith is affiliated with various academic institutions in Italy. His interests include Italian rural communities and marginal peripheral urban environments. He has published on farming communities in central Italy and on public space in Rome.

Gilda Berruti is an architect and Associate Professor of urban planning at the Department of Architecture, Federico II University of Naples, Italy. Her research interests include the social construction of urban policies and plans, the sustainable city as an aspect of the new urban question and the relationship between planning rules and urban informalities.