There are two goals to our project: 1) a focus on the comparative history of two global cities, Osaka and Los Angeles; and 2) a parallel concern with the history of urbanism, especially in Japan, as it underlies and informs the study of modern cities like Osaka and Los Angeles. This second goal also makes the program of much greater interest to urban scholars in general, thereby widening the audience by considering the larger questions of global urban development. This new, second track of the project enables us to embrace urban scholars active professionally in LA and Osaka/Kansai, not just those who are studying LA and Osaka. Both metropolises have a wide array of universities, so we seek to evolve our project into a trans-Pacific pair of regional �gcenters.�h