in HKU

Meng Yu

  • PhD Student
  • Graduate Teaching Associate

yu.3066@osu.edu

Knowlton Hall
275 W Woodruff Ave
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Meng Yu is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in City and Regional Planning. Her research interests cover regional economic sustainable development, with a special focus on a "sustainable agglomeration" oriented transportation infrastructure planning, investment and institutional remaking in a regional scale. 

Meng's most recent study, which investigating the empirical consequences on sustainable land use of China's high-speed rails innovatively connected the field of spatial sorting and land use planning using advanced econometrics method. She also works on a book chapter of transportation infrastructure policy with a special focus on "Belt and Road Initiatives" with the collaboration of Prof. Zhenhua Chen. 

Meng's research on the railway transportation development on arable land conversion has been published in top journal Applied Geography. She has also presented at several regional science and planning conferences since 2016, such as RSAI, WRSA and ACSP in the US, India and China.

She obtained her master's degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, US and the master's degree in Business Administration in Nankai University, China.

Prior to OSU, she has worked with the City and Planning Department at the University of Hong Kong as senior research assistant. Before studying at Cornell, she has worked with Ove Arup International Engineering Consultants (Beijing) Co., Ltd as business development manager in the field of regional transportation infrastructure planning and design in north China for years. 

Expertise

Meng's research interests include:

  • Understand a region's economic development patterns and its main players, how it evolves in a response to policy interventions and external shocks in terms of land use, firms strategy, labor market and social network;
  • Identify the mechanism of how regional transportation infrastructure development can make an impact to a region's economic corridor shaping by serving the true needs of local growth in an era of climate change; 
  • Explore an innovative solution in institutional and mechanism building to enable infrastructures agenda become accessible, affordable, accountable and bankable by speaking to the needs of a sustainable spatial sorting and planning, especially in developing countries.