Yuan Lu
Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Urban planning
Biography
Yuan is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests lie in public policy, green space planning, and social equity. Prior to commencing her PhD, she worked as an urban planner in Shanghai. She is a Registered Planner in China with experience in various professional projects covering new town planning, strategic planning, and urban design.
Yuan holds a master’s degree in Town and Country Planning from Tongji University in China and a master’s degree in Advanced Urbanism from Bauhaus University in Germany. She received her bachelor’s degree in Urban Planning from Zhejiang University in China.
Thesis
Green justice or just green? Urban greening policies and the park provision in Shanghai
The balanced provision of green space among different social groups is important in urban planning. The spatial matching of park distribution and demographic characteristics is a green justice issue. Currently, limited research has explored the reasons behind the distribution of inequality, with a particular lack of research in the context of developing countries.
This research looks at the gap by exploring how urban greening policies shape the possible socio-environmental inequalities in park provision in the Chinese context. As one of the main factors shaping the provision of parks, greening policies can lead to disparities in park distribution across users with different socioeconomic statuses. The urban park system in the central city of Shanghai will be selected as the case study. This thesis will analyse the changes in the spatial distribution of urban parks among different social groups and examine the role demographic characteristics play in the planning process.