Alison Brown is a Senior Lecturer in the School of City & Regional Planning at Cardiff University, and an urban planning consultant specializing in international planning practice. She is course director for the MSc in International Planning & Development, and has undertaken extensive research and consultancy in the developing world--in Southern and West Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. She has recently managed a Department for International Development-funded study on street trading and livelihoods on which the book is based.