  We emphasize the necessity of a delicate interplay between the gauge and
gravitational sectors of five-dimensional brane worlds in creating
phenomenologically relevant vacua. We discuss locally supersymmetric brane
worlds with unflipped and flipped fermionic boundary conditions and with matter
on the branes. We point out that a natural separation between the gauge and
gravity sectors, very difficult in models with true extra dimensions, may be
achieved in 4d models with deconstructed dimensions.
