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To view Zhaolong's paper, Looking to the Future of Economic Regions: Study Reveals the Economic Vitality of Chicago & Los Angeles Regions (co-written with Irwing Gama), click here. The paper was prepared for the required specialization course UPP 531, Economic Development II: Planning.
What is your academic and work background? What did you do before enrolling in the MUPP program at UIC?
I was studying urban planning at South China University of Technology as my undergrad. When I was in China my works include plans for various scales and purposes ranging from childcare facility site design to regional strategic development plan.
What attracted you to planning and made you decide you
wanted to be a planner?
Good planning can help improve people’s lives. I’d like to know about cities work and how to improve that. Studying urban planning gives me a wide range of perspectives to understand the cities.
Why did you want to study planning at UIC?
UIC is great. It is a planning school in the center of Chicago, an amazing city and the core of a great metropolitan area. Who doesn’t want to be in a great school at a great location? UIC provides me a very broad range of planning courses to enhance my knowledge, skills and ways of thinking in urban planning. I was able to find courses that I can study in depth in my concentration as well as courses that gave me good understandings at reasonable depths for other perspectives of urban planning.
What are some of the highlights of your time as a student--classes, projects, internships, volunteer involvement?
I’ve got my first internship at Woodstock Institute in May, 2012. It turned out to be a great internship experience.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I will be a planner or an economic development consultant.