I am an urban geographer specializing in the study of urban change, development and planning in East Asia and the U.S.  Urban geography is a dynamic field of human geography which analyzes spatial patterns of settlement and land use within economic, political, social, cultural and environmental contexts. As an urban geographer I am interested in the processes which shape urban space, and particularly in the historical and contemporary linkages between policy, practice and physical and social urban forms in China, Japan and the U.S.   Non-specialists can understand my work as seeking answers to questions such as “what impacts will the new emphasis on environmental planning – exemplified by the transformation of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics – have on cities throughout China?,” “what happens when new models of urban development generated in China’s hyper-developing, globalizing eastern cities are applied in the impoverished interior and western regions?,” and “how did the establishment of cities in China’s northern frontier regions change lives, landscapes and ecologies in the vast grasslands of Mongolia/Inner Mongolia?”