Xiaofan Liang

Xiaofan Liang is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. She is also an affiliated faculty with the UM Center for the Study of Complex Systems. She is passionate about fostering inclusive urban networks and enabling participatory/collaborative planning processes through urban analytics. Her approaches are largely inspired by the field of network science, complex systems, and critical & participatory approaches in GIS and planning, thus grounding her research in the pursuit of a diverse, equitable, and sustainable network society.

Her current work focuses on two themes: 1) examining how network infrastructure (e.g., transportation and social infrastructure) can simultaneously be inclusive and exclusive, offering connectivity and access for certain populations, places, or types of flows, while marginalizing or restricting others, 2) exploring how data, technology, and AI can support, transform, or challenge participatory practices in planning. Her works have been published in top-tier journals and conference proceedings, such as Journal of Planning Education and Research, Computer, Environment and Urban Systems, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, and Transactions in GIS.

Xiaofan received her Master’s and PhD of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Institute of Technology (2019-2023), B.S. in Computational Science from Minerva University as a member of the first class of students (2015-2019), and B.A. in Sociology from UC-Berkeley (2013-2015).