Yingling Fan

Yingling Fan is a professor in the regional planning and policy area who works interdisciplinarily in the fields of land use, transportation, social equity, and public health. Her overarching research goal is to investigate the impacts of spatial planning (e.g., land use, growth management, and transit improvements) on human activities and movements as well as to understand the health and social aspects of such impacts. To this end, her research combines ecological and behavioral analyses, most quantitatively, as a means of addressing urban sustainability challenges.

Fan has published her work in various urban planning and transportation research journals. Her recent projects include investigating the impact of urban form on health disparities, the role of neighborhood and family structure in influencing leisure-time activity patterns, and the impact of transit corridor improvements on job accessibility and neighborhood change.

She held the title McKnight Land-Grant Professor from 2012 to 2014—a special award that recognizes and honors the University of Minnesota’s most promising junior faculty. Fan recently received the Collaborator of the Year Award from the Hennepin County-University Partnership, the Scholar Award from the Children, Youth and Family Consortium at the University of Minnesota, the Best Paper Award from the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Pedestrian Committee, and the TRB Patricia F. Waller Award. 

She holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor’s degree in Transportation Engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China.