Chair of City and Regional Planning; Professor; Director of Program on Chinese Cities
Accepting PhD students
Dr. Yan Song’s research interests include low carbon and green cities, plan evaluation, land use development and regulations, spatial analysis of urban spatial structure and urban form, land use and transportation integration, and how to accommodate research in the above fields by using planning supporting systems, such as GIS and other computer-aided planning tools.
Dr. Song’s current research projects address domestic and international issues in the areas of impetus of urbanization and urban growth, tools of low carbon and green city developments, efficacy of land and housing markets, effects of urban growth management regulations, and integration of urban land use and transportation plans. Song’s current research projects also document the evolution of China’s urban land and housing policies and urban spatial structure in the era of China’s transition toward a market economy. She directs the Program on Chinese Cities (PCC), a new initiative within DCRP and the Center for Urban & Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. PCC conducts research and training aimed at better understanding the impacts of rapid urban growth on China’s built and natural environments and explores ways to make this process more equitable, transparent, and socially and ecologically sustainable. Dr. Song’s research projects have been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Dr. Song has served as a Research Affiliate at the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland and a Faculty Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. She has also served as a consultant on urban planning for the city government of Shenzhen, and a consultant on land use and transportation integration for Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design in China. For more recent and frequent updates on her research projects in Chinese, click here.
In the News
Evolution of Urban Development Networks
Scholars from Beijing Undertake Comparative Study of American Cities
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Affiliations: Center for Urban and Regional Studies, Program on Chinese Cities