CYFC Scholars
Program
Yingling
Fan
I was born in 1982 to
a typical working-class family in China—my mother is a math
teacher and my father is a traffic engineer. I
did my undergraduate work at Southeast University in Nanjing, China
and received my Bachelor of Science in Transportation Engineering
at age of 19 in 2001. After
college I remained on campus working as a research associate at
Southeast University’s Transportation Research Institute. My
work assignments included traveling to various cities and towns
in China and designing/redesigning highway networks to reduce traffic
congestion. The experience led me to a deeper understanding
of how transportation is inextricably intertwined with land use,
economic development, the environment, and social issues such as
equity and health. As
a result, my interest broadened to the study of cities, how cities
are supposed to work, and how to make cities good places to live
for all habitants. In 2003, I decided to study abroad and began work on my Doctor
of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I
received my Ph.D. degree in 2007. In my dissertation, I examined
the role of neighborhood design and urban form in shaping individual
activity engagement and travel behavior.
Currently, I am an Assistant
Professor of Regional Planning and Policy at the Hubert H. Humphrey
Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where
I continue my dedication to creating livable and healthy cities
and working interdisciplinarily in the fields of land use, transportation,
social equity, and public health. My current research inquiries focus on
seeking spatial, place-making solutions to improve community health
and livability, especially for those poor, underprivileged, and
underserved communities. For
example, I am the principal investigator on projects examining the impact
of light rail transit on
urban poor’s job accessibility, the impact of urban form
on health-related time use behavior, the impact of sprawl on health
disparities burdening urban population, and the impact of neighborhood
design on family-oriented activity engagement and stress levels.
My
work has appeared in Transportation Research Record, Transportation
Research Part F-Traffic Psychology and Behavior, Landscape and
Urban Planning, etc. I am also an active speaker on livable and healthy urban development
at many forums, e.g., the Transportation Research Board Annual
Meetings, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Annual
Conferences, the International Making Cities Livable Annual Conferences,
and the Biannual International Conferences on Computers in Urban
Planning and Urban Management. In
2008, I won the Transportation Research Board Pedestrian Committee
Best Paper Award and the international Patricia F. Waller Award.
