Undergraduate Urban Research Colloquium Advances Urban Scholarship Across Penn

Each spring, the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) convenes the Undergraduate Urban Research Colloquium (UURC), a signature program that embeds undergraduates in faculty- and doctoral student-mentored research on emerging urban challenges. The seminar is structured as a research incubator, designed to produce original scholarship while preparing students to pursue advanced academic and policy work.

Through Penn IUR, the program sponsors up to 10 projects and provides grants of up to $2,000 to support joint research efforts. Funds may be used for research expenses during the semester and for summer stipends supporting continued work.

At the core of UURC is a semester-long, credit-bearing seminar, CPLN 5280 / URBS 4280, cross-listed between the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design Department of City and Regional Planning and the School of Arts & Sciences’ Urban Studies Program. Students from all four undergraduate schools—Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Nursing, and Wharton—are eligible to participate, while faculty and doctoral mentors from across Penn’s 12 schools guide research spanning public health, housing, infrastructure, governance, climate, and technology.

This year’s seminar is led by Jay Arzu and Diana Negron, PhD candidates in City & Regional Planning at Weitzman, who are leading a cohort of interdisciplinary projects that reflect both methodological rigor and policy relevance.

Spring 2026 Projects: Focused Urban Inquiry

Housing, Health, and Access

Priced Out of Care: Urban Development and Clinic Access in Philadelphia, led by Huy Le (School of Nursing), examines how neighborhood change between 2019 and 2025 has reshaped access to community clinics for low-income residents. Using census data, housing records, clinic capacity data, and public health indicators, the project analyzes spatial and temporal relationships between development pressures and healthcare infrastructure to identify where disparities may be intensifying.

Morgan Hanna-Ghattas (College of Arts & Sciences, Middle East Center) will guide Political Rhetoric and Health-Seeking Behavior Among Migrant Communities in Philadelphia. This course investigates how immigration discourse shapes institutional trust and healthcare decisions. Through interviews with migrants, community health workers, and NGO leaders, the study connects political language to urban belonging, fear of institutions, and health-seeking behavior.

Climate, Infrastructure, and Urban Systems

Several projects interrogate climate resilience and infrastructure performance at multiple scales.

Green Infrastructure Under Pressure: Flood Management in China’s Sponge Cities (City & Regional Planning), led by Hui Tian (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School), evaluates the long-term performance of green–blue–grey infrastructure under China’s Sponge City Program. Using satellite imagery in Google Earth Engine and regression and machine learning models, the team analyzes trends in flood extent and explains variation in green infrastructure effectiveness across pilot cities.

The Climate Mobility Gap, guided by Shengao (Eric) Yi (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School) quantifies how extreme heat events from 2019–2024 alter multimodal travel flows across the United States. By linking origin–destination travel data with the CDC Social Vulnerability Index, the project introduces a Climate Mobility Vulnerability Corridor Index to identify communities experiencing disproportionate mobility suppression during heatwaves.

Closer to home, Dr. Xiaoxia Dong (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School) will mentor Perceived Control and Uncertainty: L vs. B Riders’ Experiences Regarding SEPTA Metro, leveraging a natural experiment in Philadelphia’s heavy rail system where only the L line provides real-time arrival information. The project assesses how information access shapes riders’ perceived control, stress, and responses to service reliability.

Inequality, Governance, and Institutional Change

Dr. Lisa Servon (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School) will lead The Geography of Incarceration in Pennsylvania (City & Regional Planning), mapping the flow of incarcerated Philadelphians from neighborhoods of origin to state correctional facilities. By examining how incarceration extracts social capital from predominantly Black, low-income communities while sustaining rural prison economies, the study frames carceral geography as a mechanism reinforcing urban inequality.

The Other Side of “Preservation”: Lasting Displacement Risks in U.S. Public Housing Redevelopment, overseen by Yining Lei (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School) evaluates whether the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program mitigates displacement more effectively than HOPE VI. Students will conduct either resident interviews or longitudinal quantitative analysis of exit patterns in Philadelphia to assess preservation’s equity outcomes.

Dr. DeMarcus A. Jenkins (School of Social Policy & Practice) will guide Beyond Housing: Food Landscape Shifts in Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Communities, which uses GIS analysis and resident interviews across Memphis, Baltimore, and St. Louis to examine how federal redevelopment efforts reshape neighborhood food environments and everyday access.

Internationally, Social Mixing & Urban Renewal in France analyzes the implementation of mixité sociale in working-class neighborhoods in the Paris region. Madeleine Galvin (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School) will oversee a literature review and policy analysis of this project, which interrogates whether social-mixing policies reduce segregation or reproduce contested assumptions about class proximity.

Technology, Youth, and the Urban Future

Dr. Bruce Zou (The Wharton School) will oversee Urban Youth in the Age of AI, examining how young people in a major city experience artificial intelligence in daily life and how those interactions shape identity, agency, and ethical reasoning. Using surveys, interviews, and guided learning activities, the study connects digital infrastructure to youth development and civic understanding in AI-saturated urban environments.

Finally, Climate Justice in K–12 School District Sustainability Planning, led by Dr. Akira-Drake Rodriguez (City & Regional Planning, Weitzman School), builds on a national database of Sustainability and Climate Action Plans to assess the durability of equity-centered climate commitments in public school districts. Through qualitative follow-up research, the project examines how districts sustain—or scale back—climate justice initiatives amid fiscal and political constraints.

Research as Training and Impact

Across projects, UURC students deploy advanced methods, including GIS analysis, spatial econometrics, surveys and interviews, machine learning, and policy evaluation, while engaging directly with real-world urban systems. Past UURC collaborations have produced refereed journal publications, leveraged additional grant funding, and launched undergraduates into independent research pathways.

By pairing undergraduates with faculty and doctoral mentors in a structured, credit-bearing seminar, UURC operationalizes Penn IUR’s core premise: that rigorous, interdisciplinary research is essential to understanding and improving cities. Each spring, the program demonstrates that undergraduates are not only immersed in urban scholarship but also contributors to it.

For more information on the UURC program, please visit https://penniur.upenn.edu/student-programs/undergraduate-urban-research-colloquium-uurc.