Weican Zuo

Weican Zuo is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture at the University of Michigan. She started her doctoral studies in 2018, focusing on real estate development and affordable housing policies in contemporary urban China. Her dissertation investigates China’s inclusionary housing policy and mixed-income housing practices. From a larger perspective, she is interested in examining fundamental social concerns related to housing, including affordability, inequality, segregation, and discrimination. Her study attempts to disentangle these socio-spatial relationships and better understand the dynamics among the physical design, residents’ perceptions, and socio-economic factors in constructing inclusive residential environments.

Weican received her Bachelor of Architecture from Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, China, and her Master of Architecture from the University of Minnesota, MN. Her master’s final (group) project focused on a city in China and used today’s issues to envision the urban built environment in the future. This project, Beijing 2118, received the 2018 Richard Morrill Final Project Award and the 2018 Student Choice Award at the University of Minnesota.