2012 Research Conference
Opening Session: The Role of Transitways in Our Region’s Economic Competitiveness

Keynote speaker

Yingling Fan, Assistant Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Panelists

  • Patrick Born, Regional Administrator, Metropolitan Council
  • Matt Kramer, President, Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
  • Lee Sheehy, Program Director, McKnight Foundation
  • Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for Sustainable Communities, Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

By 2030, the Minneapolis–St. Paul region is expected to have a network of 14 transitways. Will these lines spur economic growth, and where? How well will they connect jobs to workers? What impacts will the lines have on neighborhoods and social change? Yingling Fan, assistant professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, has been studying these issues for several years.

In her most recent work, Fan led a team that analyzed the labor supply to “competitive clusters” of industries such as medical manufacturing and publishing. The team says that to improve job access by transit, it's more effective to centralize jobs than housing—and recommends integrated policies to encourage employers to locate near transit corridors. The study was funded by the McKnight Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and the Jay and Rose Phillips Foundation of Minnesota and builds on previous work Fan conducted under the Transitway Impacts Research Program.

Following Fan's presentation, a panel of state and national leaders discussed the policy implications of the study and examined whether the findings can lead to greater economic competitiveness.

More about the study:

About the Speaker

Fan

Yingling Fan

Yingling Fan is an assistant professor of regional planning and policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on 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 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.

Fan holds a Ph.D. 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.