Associate Professor, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
About
Lan Deng’s research and teaching interests fall broadly in the areas of housing, real estate, and local public finance. Her research is “action-oriented” in the sense that she is interested in examining the different types of interventions directed towards housing and real estate development. These interventions include both formal state actions such as major housing programs as well as grassroots community-based initiatives. Her research seeks to examine the outcomes of these interventions and how they have been shaped by both local market context as well as the choices different intuitions have made. Geographically, Deng has conducted research in both the U.S. and China, two countries where that both markets and institutions differ substantially from each other. In the U.S., Deng is a leading scholar in the study of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the country’s largest affordable housing production program. She has examined several key aspects of the program’s performance, including its economic efficiency, spatial outcome, and development impact. Her current research on LIHTC (with Margaret Dewar) addresses the preservation challenges LIHTC projects face as they approach the end of their first 15-year affordability commitment. In addition to her work on LIHTC, Deng has also conducted in-depth analysis of neighborhood dynamics in different U.S. cities and how affordable housing investment as well as community-based efforts can affect the trajectory of neighborhood changes.
Deng’s work in China follows similar lines of inquiry, albeit from a more macro perspective. Starting with a comprehensive assessment of the transformation of China’s housing policy framework, Deng went on to examine how market reforms and state interventions have shaped the country’s housing investment. She has also conducted a multi-level assessment of the performance of China’s Housing Provident Fund program, a major housing finance program providing subsidized lending to support homeownership. Her current work in China investigates changes in the structure of China’s housing development industry and what they mean for Chinese housing markets and housing affordability challenge.
