Ying Jin on Why urban designers feel so constrained by their project brief, and what can liberate them: future options for cities in the UK

On September 26 for the 2022 Fall Urbanism Lecture series, co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program, and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT, Ying Jin discussed his work on understanding wider urban systems connected to the question on Why urban designers feel so constrained by their project brief, and what can be done to liberate them: future options for cities in the UK.

Ying Jin is the current Director of the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, at the Department of Architecture Professor Jin leads the Cities and Transport Research Group, and the city-scale data science and urban modelling applications at the EPSRC Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC 2011–2020).

Professor Jin lectures on city planning, urban design, and urban modelling. His main research interests are computer models of cities, and urban history. He has extensive industry experience and directs multi-disciplinary teams in building and using computer models as experimental platforms to appraise policy scenarios that involve investment, regulation, pricing, and promotional campaigns.

Ying presented his work on dynamic growth scenarios using a recursive spatial equilibrium model LUISA (Land-use interaction with social accounting model) in the UK. The presentation showed growth in dwellings for the region produced for future 2070 scenarios on job and housing balance and possibilities to learn from these scenario tests.

By Sylvia Jimenez, Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fellow, Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.