How do cities
see their residents?
Urban livability, service reporting, and the visibility of neighborhood needs in data-driven governance.
311 & urban livability ↗URBAN PLANNING / SPATIAL RESEARCH
Hi there, I'mDai Yuchen.
PhD student in City and Regional Planning
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Understanding cities through
data, places, and people.
Geospatial methods. Urban questions.Scroll to discover
01ABOUT ME
A closer look
at urban life.
I'm a PhD student in City and Regional Planning at UNC–Chapel Hill. My research brings geospatial analysis and machine learning to questions about transportation, urban environments, and how cities respond to residents.
Recent work explores 311 reporting, urban greening, and high-resolution land-cover mapping. I earned my MS in Urban Planning from Columbia University in 2024, where I studied alternatives to on-street parking in New York City.
UNC–Chapel Hill
City and Regional Planning
Columbia University
Urban Planning · Urban Analytics
Miami University
Urban & Regional Planning
Education Studies
02RESEARCH INTERESTS
The questions I explore.
Across cities, mobility, and the environment.
How do cities
What could our
streets become?
Travel behavior, transit-oriented development, and alternatives to on-street parking and car dependence.
Explore my master's thesis ↗What can spatial
data reveal?
Machine learning, remote sensing, urban greening, and consistent high-resolution land-cover mapping.
GeoAI & urban greening ↗03PUBLICATIONS
Research in print.
Google ScholarSustainability · 18(14), 7500
Blind Spots in the Responsive City: A 311 Visibility Audit for Sustainable Urban Governance in New York City
Audits geographic gaps in New York City's 2023 311 service requests against population, housing, and rodent inspection benchmarks to identify places that may be underrepresented in complaint records.
Landscape Architecture / 风景园林 · 33(7), 35–46 · In Chinese
Health Assessment of Urban Regreening: An Evidence Framework Derived from Wearable Devices
城市绿化重构的健康化评估：基于可穿戴设备的证据框架
Synthesizes 74 studies to connect wearable measurements, environmental exposure, and everyday movement with the evaluation of restorative urban green spaces.
Landscape Ecology · 41(6), 109
Using GeoAI and machine learning tools for consistent high-resolution land cover mapping based on time-series NAIP imagery
Combines GeoAI and machine learning with historical aerial imagery to produce consistent one-meter land-cover maps across years with differing sensor quality.
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information · 12(11), 446
Comparative Hotspot Analysis of Urban Living Environments and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Strategies: A Case Study of Beijing and Xi’an
Combines GIS hotspot analysis with subjective and objective indicator weighting to compare living environments in Beijing and Xi’an and develop transit-oriented planning recommendations.
International Journal of Coal Geology · 274, 104293
Prediction of higher heating value of coal based on gradient boosting regression tree model
Uses gradient boosting regression trees to estimate coal heating value from proximate analysis, evaluating performance with U.S. Geological Survey and Kentucky coal datasets.
MASTER'S THESIS / COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY / 2024
Rethinking On-Street Parking Alternative from Policy and Facility Perspectives: A Case Study of New York City
Examining alternatives to on-street parking through resident surveys and interviews, with attention to policy and everyday mobility in New York City.
Adviser: Anthony Vanky
04EXPERIENCE & PRACTICE
From analysis to application.
National Key R&D Program of China
Research Assistant · Coal-related resource exploration
Supported coal resource target-area optimization and integrated exploration. Applied GIS to three-dimensional geological modeling and data science to the study of trace elements in coal.
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Part-time Research Assistant · Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth
Created thematic maps in ArcGIS Pro and tested data loading, analysis, and visualization in ArcGIS Online for an urban spatial-information platform supporting smart-city services.
Selected planning projects
Mapping, evaluation & urban designResilience &
the Superblock
Led GIS mapping and contributed to urban-form proposals, with a focus on a bicycle-friendly transportation network.
View Report PDF · 25.5 MB ↗Niterói Smart City
Dashboard Prototype
Working with Niterói city representatives, the team developed a dashboard prototype and evaluation framework for long-term urban goals. Stakeholder discussions, international case studies, and municipal data reviews informed indicators across economy, mobility, technology, society, and environment. Deliverables included custom metrics, smart-city benchmarks, a dashboard demonstrated with sample data, and recommendations for data collection, public access, and ongoing monitoring.
View Report PDF · 11.8 MB ↗Millville Village
Rezoning
Led GIS mapping for current land-use analysis and plan development, and analyzed local economic development. Worked with a team to support the village’s strategic plan, including land-use strategies, infrastructure investment, and community-building initiatives.
Morgan Township
Zoning Service
Developed with a Miami University team in Fall 2021 to support Morgan Township and the Ohio–Kentucky–Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) with updates to the township’s Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Plan. The shared GIS Hub brings together township data layers, community maps, zoning information, and development-planning tools.
View GIS Hub Web maps & data ↗05TEACHING
Teaching experience.
Department of City and Regional Planning
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
PLAN 715 · Introduction to GIS for Urban Planners
Teaching Assistant
PLAN 637 · Public Transportation
Teaching Assistant
06METHODS & TOOLS
My working toolkit.
Geospatial & remote sensing
Spatial analysis, thematic mapping, web GIS, and remote-sensing data analysis.
Programming & data
Geoprocessing automation, statistical analysis, predictive modeling, and sensor data collection.
Research & communication
Planning evaluation, data visualization, and research communication in Mandarin Chinese and English.
07LET'S CONNECT
Let's talk cities,
data & what's next.
For research conversations, collaboration, or a quick introduction, send me a note or suggest a time to meet.
Yuchen.Dai@unc.edu ↗Request a meeting
Suggest a time. I'll confirm by email.