Three Teams Selected for Research on China Urban Development and Land Policy  

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has announced three teams are receiving a research commission for the 2026–27 International Research for the Study of China’s Urban Development and Land Policy program.  The recipients are based outside mainland China and each received $35,000 to fund their research. This year’s recipients—Rachelle Alterman, Kai Gu, and Xize Wang—submitted proposals for academic and policy research papers addressing land, urban, fiscal, and environmental issues relating to urbanization in China.   

Rachelle Alterman, professor of urban planning and law at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, will focus on the legal and governance aspects of condominium tenure in China at a time when the need for effective redevelopment mechanisms is urgent. Her project, “Legal and Institutional Challenges in Redeveloping China’s Condominium Housing: What Can Be Learned from Other Countries’ Experiences?” will take a comparative approach, looking at how other countries have approached this issue through a series of case studies. These studies will form the backbone of an analytical framework and policy insights for the Chinese context. 

Kai Gu, professor at the University of Auckland, will complete his project titled “Disintegrated Urban Regeneration: Recovering Cultural Landscapes for Community Needs and Local Economies.” This study will apply a morphological approach to examine how urban regeneration impacts the cultural landscape, a sense of community, and economic drivers such as tourism development. 

Xize Wang, assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, will focus on China’s elderly population’s access to urban transit using a novel dataset to study what disparities exist. His study, “Urban Transit Coverage for an Aging China: Spatial Inequity, Fine-Grained Mapping, and Local Fiscal Drivers,” aims to provide crucial insights and tools to develop more responsive and equitable policy. 

“This annual program has created high-level research that has been published in leading journals,” said Zhi Liu, executive director of China Programs at the Lincoln Institute. “It promotes international dialogue and keeps the Lincoln Institute’s goal of ‘finding answers in land’ at its core.” 

The International Research for the Study of China’s Urban Development and Land Policy program accepts applications from academic researchers working on the following topics in China: land use, carbon neutrality, and spatial planning and governance; urban regeneration; municipal finance and land value capture; impacts of new urbanization; land policies; housing policies; urban environment and public health; and land and water conservation. The program is offered annually by the Lincoln Institute, and applications for the 2027–28 cycle will open in fall 2026.  

Kristina McGeehan is the director of communications at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Construction site and city skyline in Shanghai. Credit: DongFunStock via Getty Images.