About me

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Here is Xuanyu Zhou.

I am an undergraduate student in the Urban and Rural Planning at Zhejiang University. I’m also an exchange student in the College of Environmental Design (CED) at University of California, Berkeley. My research focus on Urban Equity, Urban Mobility, Big data and Machine Learning in Urban Planning. I’m exploring LLM in Urban Planning and Urban AI.

If you are interested in any aspect of me, I am always open to discussions and collaborations. Feel free to reach out to me at — xuanyu.zhou [at] zju.edu.cn or xuanyu.zhou [at] berkeley.edu

Download my CV (Update October 2025)

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Research Interests

My research interests mainly focus on Data-driven Urban Planning, including:

Urban Equity: Applying demographic and visitation data to explore the equity of urban infrastructure, particularly through spatio-temporal analysis of urban green space (UGS) access and its impact on community resilience in shrinking cities.
Urban AI: Leveraging machine learning techniques to model complex urban phenomena—from post-pandemic resilience to the relationship between the built environment and public health outcomes.
LLM for Urban Planning: Exploring the application of Large Language Models to analyze urban policy documents, public sentiment, and qualitative data to generate insights for more responsive and inclusive planning strategies.
Urban Mobility: Developing advanced modeling frameworks for next-generation transportation systems, integrating dynamic demand patterns and heterogeneous fleets to optimize for efficiency and equity.

News and Updates

Oct 2025: Finish summer intern experience at MIT-UF-NEU, you can check our work here!
Sep 2025: Work accepted by Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, see you in Washington, D.C.!
May 2025: Participate in MIT-UF-NEU Summer Research Camp, mentored by Xuan Jian, Ph.D.
Feb 2025: Work accepted by EDRA57, see you all in Amherst, MA!
Nov 2024: Very excited to participate in Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) annual meeting in Seattle. I’ll share my recent research on urban green space in shrinking cities.
Aug 2024: Work accepted by ACSP Conference, see you in Seattle!

Along the Way

My research journey began in my sophomore year at Zhejiang University, where I was selected for the Qizhenwenxue Undergraduate Research Program. Under the guidance of Prof. Shuang Ma and Prof. Shuangjin Li, I analyzed post-pandemic urban resilience using Geographically Weighted Random Forest (GWRF), linking built environment characteristics to recovery rates (published here). I then expanded this work to investigate the interplay between public health, shared mobility, and urban form (submitted to npj Urban Sustainability).

In my junior year, I joined the Natural AI Lab led by Mingze Chen, where I spearheaded a study on Urban Green Space (UGS) and shrinking city revitalization through a time-lagged analysis of Pittsburgh, PA. This work was presented at the 2024 ACSP Annual Conference and is under review at Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

As an exchange student at UC Berkeley, I contributed to Prof. Lu Liang’s 3M lab, collaborating with Yuye Zhou on comparing LiDAR-based Sky View Factor (SVF) with traditional imagery-based methods for microclimate analysis.

My trajectory culminated at the MIT-UF-NEU joint summer research camp, where I co-developed a framework for optimizing Urban Air Mobility (UAM) systems with Prof. Jinhua Zhao and Xuan Jiang. This work has been accepted by the 2026 TRB Annual Meeting (preprint) and is under review at IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

I am eager to join a rigorous master’s program to continue tackling complex urban challenges at a deeper level.