Yefu Chen

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin, supervised by Prof. Junfeng Jiao and Prof. Ming Zhang. Before that, I received a Master’s in Urban Planning and Design from the University of Washington and a Bachelor’s in Economic Geography from Sun Yat-sen University.

As a “geographic” planner, I am passionate about the interrelationship between accessibility and affordability of cities and public services. This passion has fueled my research interests in city and community building, including connected and smart infrastructure systems, disparities in affordability and equity, and interpretable machine learning and data science while also focusing on improving the equity and safety of urban systems.

My research focuses on public transportation, housing valuation, and regional affordability. Through various quantitative methods (machine learning algorithms and Bayesian modeling), combined with multi-source data acquired through big data techniques, I am primarily focused on analyzing the non-linear effects of public transportation services on location affordability.

Projects Involved

How the single-family residence housing market capitalizes green property upgraded features: evidence from city of Austin

What Are the Relationships between Public Transit and Gentrification Progress? An Empirical Study in the New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island Areas

The relationship between E-scooter travels and daily leisure activities in Austin, Texas

Exploring temporal varying demographic and economic disparities in COVID-19 infections in four U.S. areas: based on OLS, GWR, and random forest models

Disparities in affecting factors of housing price: A machine learning approach to the effects of housing status, public transit, and density factors on single-family housing price

Education

• M.S. Urban Planning, University of Washington
• B.S. Urban Planning, Sun Yat-sen University