Cities account for 78% of global energy consumption and generate over 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, making integrated spatial planning, cleaner built environments, and targeted adaptation strategies essential for sustainable urbanization. Our research advances dual tracks in urban climate policy to tackle both the sources and impacts of environmental change. On the mitigation front, we evaluate local planning interventions and built-environment policies designed to curb emissions, and develop multi-sector GHG emission benchmarking frameworks across the building, transport, and industrial sectors, alongside interactive spatial analytics platforms to track urban decarbonization.

Complementing these decarbonization efforts, our ongoing work in climate adaptation planning focuses on enhancing urban resilience against escalating extreme weather risks, specifically evaluating heat vulnerability, spatial equity in cooling center accessibility, and the behavioral efficacy of public warning systems during severe heatwaves. Expanding on these adaptive capabilities, we are developing AI-driven spatial analytics and multi-source data frameworks to model urban vulnerability to severe climate-induced extreme weather events, providing data-driven spatial planning solutions to enhance long-term urban resilience.

We work closely with civil and environmental engineers, developing climate change mitigation technologies such as carbon-absorbing building materials and nitrogen recycling systems. Our research focuses on the life cycle assessment of such technologies and developing planning policy solutions to support the adoption of the technologies, which could ultimately lead to expediting the decarbonization of our cities and regions.  

Land preservation has the benefits of securing parks and open space within built-up urban and suburban areas, producing food and natural vegetation for wildlife habitats, protecting source water, and sequestering carbon. Promoting compact and efficient land uses can mitigate the costs of sprawl, including dependency on automobiles and imported oil, air and water pollution, GHG emissions, and extensive infrastructure provision costs. We study the effectiveness of various growth management policies (e.g., Greenbelt, Smart Growth) to promote sustainable urban growth and land preservation, including carbon sinks in different parts of the world. 

The emergence of online platforms and big data has transformed planning and policy-making to be more accessible, inclusive, and transparent. Effective communication using online platforms can better inform our communities, make public participation accessible and inclusive, enhance planners' capacity to engage communities, and inform decision-makers to better address the needs and wants of the communities. Our research focuses on developing/utilizing online platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, webpages, and apps) to collect and analyze communication data and derive useful planning implications to inform our communities, planners, and decision-makers.