Hongmei Lu Editor & Author

Yanliu Lin is an Associate Professor of Spatial Planning and Digitalization in the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on collaborative planning, digital planning, and planning support science for sustainable urban futures. She examines how digital technologies (e.g., planning support systems, social media, artificial intelligence, and digital twins) interact with urban governance and planning processes across diverse institutional and local contexts. She is the principal investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project on collaborative planning in China (CoChina). She has served as a lead guest editor for two special issues: Digital Planning for Sustainable Urban Future in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, and Collaborative Planning in the Digital Era in Planning Practice & Research. She has also co-edited two books: Smart Governance and New Forms of Collaborative Planning (The Commercial Press, 2022) and Village in the City: Asian Variations of Urbanisms of Inclusion (Park Books, 2014).

Hongmei Lu is currently a researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from Michigan Technological University, and her dissertation was nominated for the 2021 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her research focuses on digitally enabled environmental policy and planning, as well as collaborative governance, with a thematic emphasis on nature-based sustainability. She contributes to the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project on collaborative planning in China (CoChina), where she studies digital participation in shaping public spheres and collaborative governance. In addition to her academic work, she is also active in community-engaged research. Her research examines the practice of nature-based solutions through a comparative lens, including cases such as the implementation of green roof policies in metropolitan Shanghai, China’s Sponge City program, local food systems in Michigan, and urban green spaces in the Netherlands.