ChengHe Guan is an Assistant Professor of Urban Design. He taught an urban design studio, a research seminar on spatial analysis, and a lecture course on urban form at Harvard Graduate School of Design and Harvard College for the last three years. Professor Guan was a Research Fellow at the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He works as a consultant for the PEAK Urban program at COMPAS, University of Oxford and the World Bank urban development sector.

Professor Guan’s research interest is on urban form, transformation, and simulation. He uses quantitative research methods, urban growth modeling, and spatial statistics to study the changing urban geographical processes and urban migration policies that shape cities, towns, and landscape. His expertise in GIS application and spatial analysis covers multidisciplinary topics including urban design, urban geography, and regional landscape planning. Professor Guan is a registered Architect in California since 2009. He is the founding partner of a design consulting firm City Builder Design and serves as the chief designer for the North America Institute of Buddhism, a nonprofit organization in the United States.

Research Interests

• Changing urban geographical processes that shape cities, towns, and landscapes
• Urban design, land use, and planning policy
• Urban simulation, cellular automata urban growth modeling, and spatial analysis
• Real estate, urban economics, and urban development
• Regional planning and international development

Select Publications

• Guan, C., & Rowe, P. G. (2018). In pursuit of a well-balanced network of cities and towns: A case study of the Changjiang Delta Region in China. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 45(3), 548-566. http://doi.org/10.1177/2399808317696073
• Guan, C. and Mehrotra R. (2018). Can urban design intervention at scale contribute to affordable housing in dense cities? Three paradigms of spatial strategy in Mumbai, India. Urban Design, 2018(2): 32-43. Tsinghua University Press: http://urbandesign.tsinghuajournals.com
• Guan, C. (2018). Spatial metrics of urban form: measuring compact cities in China. In Lin, Z. and Gamez, J. Eds. Vertical Urbanism: Designing Compact Cities in China. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-351-20683-9
• Guan, C. (2018). Urban form and digitalization of urban design. Urban Planning International. 33 (1), 22-27. In Chinese. DOI:10.22217/upi.2017.540
• Guan, C., & Rowe, P. G. (2017). Should big cities grow? Scenario-based cellular automata urban growth modeling and policy applications. Journal of Urban Management. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jum.2017.01.002

Education

• DDes
  Harvard University
• MDes
  Harvard University
• MArch
  Washington University in St. Louis