Urbanization. Globalization. Sustainability.

These three words denote paramount human concerns during these early years of the 21st Century. The Urban Group at Stanford University works at the intersection between these three concepts. Examining rapidly urbanizing regions in Asia and California, our research aims to uncover the drivers behind urbanization, the role of globalization in the urban process and the environmental impacts of urban growth. We are interested both in uncovering fundamental processes for academic publication and in crafting rules of thumb for policy application.

Our interdisciplinary research team is drawn from a wide range of academic fields including earth science, policy history, geography, environmental systems analysis, urban planning and spatial statistics. Methodologically, we employ remote sensing analysis, geographic information science, statistics, systems modeling, fieldwork and historical assessment. Our work has been sponsored by NASA, the NSF, and the Woods Institute for the Environment.

If you're interested in learning more about the work we do, please check out the individual projects listed in the Research list above.