China Program Research Fellows, 2011–2012

The Lincoln Institute's Program on the People's Republic of China awards research fellowships to international faculty and researchers who are working on land and tax policy issues relevant in China. These fellows undertake research and participate in conferences and other Lincoln Institute activities. Priority topics include urban economics, land use and policy, urban and rural planning, local public finance, and property taxation.

  • Nathaniel Baum-Snow
  • Department of Economics, Brown University
  • Matthew Turner
  • Department of Economics, University of Toronto
  • Urban Transportation, Urban Growth, and Changes in Urban Form in China
  • This study investigates the extent to which massive investments in urban infrastructure since 1990 and the resulting expansions of various types of urban transportation infrastructure are affecting urban growth and urban form. Relying on data covering road networks, public transportation, demographics, economic growth, and land use patterns, a central focus of this investigation is to understand how different types of transport infrastructure interact to cause urban change and to investigate the differing impacts of radial versus ring-road highway capacity, along with subways.
  • Yehua Dennis Wei
  • Institute of Public and International Affairs and Department of Geography, University of Utah
  • Urban Land Expansion and Spatial Restructuring in the Yangtze River Delta, China
  • The Yangtze River Delta (YRD), one the engines for China's growth, is experiencing explosive urbanization and urban land expansion on a large scale. This project aims at improving the understanding of urban land expansion and spatial restructuring in urban China through a study of the leading cities of Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Nanjing. Data collection includes time-series remote sensing data and urban statistics to reconstruct land use change from the 1980s to the 2000s, interviews with government officials and corporations, and geospatial modeling. This study seeks to examine the magnitude, patterns, and mechanisms of urban land expansion since the economic reforms and to analyze the spatial organization of China's globalizing cities as manifested by land use, and the forces underlying urban land expansion.