Lan Deng

Lan Deng is Professor and Chair of the Urban and Regional Planning Program, where she teaches courses on housing, real estate, and local public finance. Her research focuses on housing policy and housing development in both the U.S. and China. As a planning scholar, she is particularly interested in examining the different types of interventions that countries have developed to improve housing outcomes for their residents.

In the U.S., her work covers major government housing programs as well as community-based initiatives. She has conducted extensive study of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the nation’s largest affordable housing production program, where she has evaluated the program’s economic efficiency, neighborhood impacts, and preservation needs.

Deng’s work in China examines the evolving roles of the government versus the development of private markets in shaping the country’s housing system. She has conducted comprehensive assessment of China’s major housing reforms and how they have transformed the country’s housing systems, with a particular example being the Chinese Housing Provident Fund (HPF) program, a collective savings scheme that provides subsidized lending to support homeownership.

Deng’s recent work examines the dynamics of housing production in the two nations, analyzing how the interplay of government actions and industry behaviors has contributed to structural problems in housing delivery, as evidenced by an oversupply of housing in China versus chronic housing underproduction in the U.S. 

Deng’s research has been featured in major national and international news outlets, including Bloomberg, Newsweek, and NPR.From 2020 to 2026 she served as the North American Editor for Housing Studies. At the University of Michigan, she served as the Associate Director for the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies (2020–2022) and the Faculty Director for the Real Estate Development Graduate Certificate (2016–2020). She also cofounded the Collective for Equitable Housing (CEH) initiative.

Deng holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning (2004) from University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. (1999), and B.S. (1996) from Peking University, China.