Chendi Zhang

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Chendi Zhang (she/her/hers) is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research interests include age-friendly public space, participation and community engagement, urban design, smart city and technologies, and Urban China.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, Chendi was a landscape designer at OLIN, Philadelphia, assisted in curating Penn-China Design Dialogue 2019, worked on Beautiful China – Reflections on Landscape Architecture in Contemporary China as an assistant editor and book designer, and started to share tutorials about landscape architecture and her experience as an international student in design and planning major as a social media influencer.

Chendi studied and worked in the field of landscape architecture for ten years, holding her master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and bachelor’s degree of Science in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University. With her research concentration, practice experience, and design background, Chendi studies urban issues from a perspective of how planning and design processes can collaborate more tightly and efficiently to better respond to the demands of overlooked and misrepresented vulnerable groups and reduce spatial inequality in the built environment.

Website: chendizest.com

Claire Nelischer

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I am a doctoral candidate in UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning. My research centers on questions of spatial justice in the production, design, and governance of urban public space, and the role of planners, designers, and communities in shaping shared public environments and outcomes. My dissertation investigates the role of philanthropy in the production of urban public parks and implications for spatial justice. This work is supported by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

I am also a Doctoral Fellow at cityLAB-UCLA, a research center that leverages design, research, policy, and education to create more just urban futures. With cityLAB, I lead community-engaged research efforts focused on understanding and intervening in the public realm to support the safety, well-being, and urban citizenship of youth and older adults in Los Angeles and beyond.

In my research and teaching, I explore transdisciplinary approaches to understanding and representing the city. I hold a graduate certificate from UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative, where I now teach as an instructor and teaching assistant. I am a founding member of the UnCommon Public Space Group, a collective that uses community-based events to explore pressing public space issues and to advance spatial justice. Before pursuing doctoral studies, I worked in policy research, advocacy, and community engagement in Toronto and New York City, with a focus on the public realm.

I have co-authored several publications and policy reports with many wonderful advisors, classmates, and colleagues, including Intergenerational public space design and policy: A review of the literature (Journal of Planning Literature), Caring public space: Advancing justice through intergenerational public space design and planning (Journal of Urban Affairs), Urban humanities as a framework for the study of public space during the pandemic (Journal of Urban Design), and The Road, Home: Challenges of and Responses to Homelessness in State Transportation Environments (Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives).

Gus Wendel

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Gus Wendel began the Ph.D program in Urban Planning in the fall of 2020. His research is broadly concerned with the intersection of race, gender and sexuality, urban design and governance, and neighborhood change. In his concurrent role as the Assistant Director of cityLAB-UCLA, Gus oversees several design-research projects examining the links between housing insecurity, long-distance commuting, and public space access and use. Gus also manages the multi-year Mellon Foundation award to the Urban Humanities Initiative, where he also co-produces the Digital Salon and is involved in teaching and research. Prior to UCLA, Gus worked for the Oregon Secretary of State and advocated for LGBTQ rights in the state of Oregon. Gus has a Master in Urban and Regional Planning from the Luskin School of Public Affairs and a BA in International Relations and Italian Studies from Brown University.