Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London. His research interests include urban development in China and its social and sustainable challenges. He is the author of Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China (Routledge, 2015), Creating Chinese Urbanism: Urban Revolution and Governance Change (UCL Press, 2022, free downloadable from UCL Press), and co-editor (with Roger Keil) of After Suburbia: Urbanization in the 21st Century (Toronto University Press, 2022).

He is the principal investigator of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant – Rethinking China’s Model of Governance. He received BSc and MSc from Nanjing University, and PhD from the University of Hong Kong. He has taught previously in Southampton and Cardiff University. In 2016, he was conferred the award of Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences in the UK.

Bartlett Professor of Planning is a position previously held by Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Sir William Holford, Lord Richard Llewelyn-Davies, Sir Peter Hall and, most recently, Mike Batty FRS. Professor Wu’s prestigious appointment since 2011 presents the opportunity for the Bartlett School of Planning to redefine the planning discipline in global terms for a new generation.

吴缚龙博士是伦敦大学学院巴特利特规划讲座教授。他获得南京大学学士、硕士学位和香港大学博士学位。自20世纪90年代中以来曾先后任教于英国南安普敦大学和卡迪夫大学，于2016年获得英国社会科学院院士。据社会科学论文索引（SSCI）排名为全球前50名的地理学，英国国家经济社会基金会（ESRC）2013卓越国际影响力奖获得者，被誉为中国城市研究的世界级权威。他的研究兴趣包括中国城市发展及其社会和可持续挑战。他著有《为了增长而规划：中国的城市和区域规划》(2015)、《创造中国城市主义：城市革命和治理变革》(2022，下载：UCL出版社)、与Roger Keil合编《郊区化之后：21世纪的城市化》(2022)。他目前负责欧洲研究理事会(ERC)的高级研究计划项目：重新思考中国的治理模式。

巴特利特规划讲座教授历任为Patrick Abercrombie 爵士（主持“大伦敦规划”）、William Holford 爵士（1947 年英国城乡规划法起草者、堪培拉的规划者）、Richard Llewelyn-Davies 勋爵（英国新城米尔顿凯恩斯的设计者）、Peter Hall（彼得·霍尔）爵士、和Mike Batty教授（英国皇家科学院院士）。自2011年起的重要任命给巴特雷规划学院带来在全球意义下重新定义新一代规划的机遇，标志着中国城市和规划研究在世界主流学界确立地位。

Fangzhu Zhang is Professor in China Planning and joint coordinator for China Planning Research Group (CPRG) at Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her main research interests focus on innovation and governance; urban village redevelopment and migrant integration in China; and eco-innovation and eco-city development in China. She has been involved in several research projects funded by the EU innovation programme (on Finance access); ESRC/DFID (on Chinese urban villages); the British Academy (China’s innovation and governance; Chinese informal settlements; China’s eco-city planning); RTPI (on China planning); the Leverhulme Trust (Urban China Research International Network) and ESRC-NSFC (Urban development financialisation). Currently, she is working on the ERC Advanced Grant research project, rethinking China’s Model of Urban Governance (ChinaUrban, 2020-2025). 

She has published articles widely in leading international journals. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal entitled “Transactions in Planning and Urban Research” (TPUR), published by SAGE. The journal provides the platform to enhance the greater impacts of urban China studies for a global community. She is a guest editor for several special issues, such as “Planning the Chinese City” (Town Planning Review, 2008); “New Direction for Urban China Studies” (Urban Studies, 2020); “Financialised urban development: Chinese and (South-)East Asian observations” (Land Use Policy, 2021); “Metropolitan development and city-regional governance in China” (Transactions in Planning and Urban Research, 2023); and “Women-led Research in Urban China Studies” (TPUR, 2024). She is also co-editor of the book “Rural Migrants in Urban China” (Routledge, 2013) and “Handbook on China’s Urban Environmental Governance (Edward Elgar, 2023). To date (2024), she has successfully supervised ten PhD students and is currently supervising ten PhD research projects on urban China planning.

Weikai Wang is currently working as a Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, on this ERC funded ‘ChinaUrban’ Project. Prior to joining UCL, he worked as a Research Associate on a NERC-Newton funded research project in School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at University of Glasgow (2020-2022). 

Weikai has diverse experience in academia, industry and government in the UK and China. He gained his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Human Geography and Bachelor’s degrees in Economics at Peking University. He completed his doctoral research in Urban Studies at University of Glasgow. Outside academia, he worked as a planning consultant (2014-2016), where he participated in over ten government planning projects for multi-scalar Chinese governments. Based on interdisciplinary academic training and diverse working experiences, he studies urban and regional development from a multidisciplinary perspective, combining the insights from geography, planning and environmental science. His current research mainly focuses on urban and regional governance, spatial planning, and environmental governance. He has published several papers in English and Chinese leading journals around these topics.

Dr Ying Wang joined the Bartlett School of Planning in January 2022 as a Research Fellow on the ChinaUrban project. Previously, she worked as Research Fellow at the University of Warwick and the University of Bristol, after completion her doctoral research within the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton.

Her research has been concerned with the everyday process of social (dis)integration in China’s rapid urban development, which is not only a social process but also an institutional process shaped by top-down and bottom-up practices across multiple scales. She is committed to an interdisciplinary approach to planning research, drawing on theoretical insights and methodological tools from geography, sociology and political science. More recent work has been in neighbourhood governance in urban China, social mix in China and its integration policies, and geographies of neighbourhood cohesion at the time of COVID-19.

Dr Yi Feng is working as a research fellow on the ChinaUrban project. Before this, Yi Feng completed her doctoral research at Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. She had studied urban planning at the Nanjing University of China, where she got both Bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Her research interests lie in urban governance, financing urban development and urban development model associated with land. Drawing upon a micro political perspective, she has done research work on urban financialisation in China through the lens of urban development and investment corporations (chengtou) and land reserve centres. 

Zhenfa Li is a research fellow of this ERC project and a former PhD candidate supervised by Professor Fulong Wu and Professor Fangzhu Zhang. He finished his undergraduate study at Beijing Normal University and got the master’s degree at Peking University.

He currently focuses on the process of financialisation. Specifically, he pays attention to the role of the state, state–finance entanglements, state–market relations and the role of the financial intermediaries in financialisation. He mainly uses the perspectives of political economy and economic geography. The main empirical focus of his research is local government bonds in China.

Xiaoxuan is a research student at the Bartlett School of Planning under the supervision of Prof. Fangzhu Zhang and Prof. Fulong Wu. Her research focuses on the changing environmental governance in urban china based on the theoretical framework of urban political ecology. Xiaoxuan got her master degree MRes Inter-disciplinary Urban Design from UCL on 2017, and her bachelor degrees BE Urban planning and BA Sociology form Peking University on 2016.

Her PhD research aims to contribute to the dynamics of eco-city initiatives and the changing urban political ecological context in China by situating the development of eco-city initiatives within the broader discussion of the environmental, land, financial and territorial aspects of urban governance. The research explores the planning and implementation of eco-city initiatives within a multi-scaled socio-regulatory framework, and sees how ecological goals have been selectively incorporated and achieved in the planning and implementation process, and how these actions corresponded with the regulations and concerns of the central state.

Manqi Wang is a PhD candidate at UCL under the supervision of Prof. Fulong Wu and Prof. Fangzhu Zhang. Her research focuses on the transformation of urban redevelopment and governance in post-reform China. Manqi got her master’s degree in International Planning at UCL in 2017. Before returning to UCL, she worked as an urban planner (intern) at the Renewal Bureau in Guangzhou, China and ICMA in Washington, D.C., the United States.

She intends to further develop her academic interests and has done research work in urban governance in China through the lens of micro-regeneration (weigaizao) policies and practices.

Yining Liu is a PhD student at UCL, under the supervision of Prof. Fangzhu Zhang and Prof. Yvonne Rydin. She got her MSc and BSc degrees from the UCL Bartlett School of Planning. Her research interests lie in the transitions of China’s environmental governance and the political ecology of China’s ecological projects.

Handuo Deng is a PhD student at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her supervisors are Professor Fulong Wu and Dr Jessica Ferm. She got her MPhil’s degree at the University of Cambridge and Bachelor’s at Peking University. Her primary interest is the changing urban governance in China. Her PhD project is on Chengdu’s urban development and governance with the strategy of ‘Park City.’

Jingyi Qin is a PhD student at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her supervisors are Professor Fulong Wu and Prof. Fangzhu Zhang. She got her Bachelor’s degree at Nankai University and MPhil’s at the University of Cambridge. Her primary interest is the retail gentrification and hipster consumption in China.

Sumu Lin is a MPhil/PhD student at Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. His supervisors are Prof. Fangzhu Zhang and Prof. Fulong Wu. He gained the Bachelor’s degree at University of Toronto and got the Master’s degree from the UCL Bartlett School of Planning. His research interest is the process of financialization and urban development in China. The focus of his research is the management of local public assets in China.

Sherry Liu is a PhD researcher at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London (UCL). Her supervisors are Professor Fulong Wu and Professor Fangzhu Zhang. She previously obtained her BSc in Anthropology and her MSc in Spatial Planning from UCL. Her research focuses on Chinese urban regeneration, with a particular interest in culture-led redevelopment and urban governance.

Mengran Xu was awarded her PhD in Urban Studies, Planning and Human Geography in Summer 2023. Before that, she was a PhD candidate jointly supervised by Prof. Fulong Wu and Dr. Susan Moore. She got her master degree in Human Geography from Peking University, China and bachelor degree in Resources Environment and the Management of Urban and Rural Planning from Nanjing University, China.

Her PhD research emphasised a subjective dimension of migrant integration and intergroup relations, which means the willingness of the migrants to make friends with the locals.

She now is a postdoctoral research associate at Department of Geography, King’s College London.

Kan Zhu was awarded his PhD in early 2024. Before that, he was a PhD candidate jointly supervised by Prof. Fangzhu Zhang and Prof. Fulong Wu. His PhD work examined China’s innovation development within the frame of urban transformation. Kan started studying urban planning at Nanjing University during his undergraduate period, and then he earned a master’s degree in urban and economic geography at Utrecht University. 

His PhD research focused on Chinese science parks and emerging innovation spaces. He used a political-economic perspective to understand how China’s innovation strategies were incorporated into the development of Chinese cities. Particularly, he investigated the role of the state in facilitating China’s high-tech upgrading by studying the governance efforts in operating Chinese science parks.