Bridging Data and Design: How URP’s Dr. Zhaoxi Zhang Is Harnessing AI To Advance Healthier Cities
For Assistant Professor Zhaoxi Zhang, urban design goes far beyond maps and grids. As a self-described urban enthusiast, Zhang places her work at the intersection of the built environment, technology, and human wellbeing. Utilizing cutting-edge tools and data-driven analysis, she’s helping to create safer, healthier, and smarter urban spaces.
Zhang joined the University of Florida’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning this past fall, coming to Gainesville from New York City, where she served as a Faculty Fellow at New York University’s Center for Urban Science + Progress, focusing on technology-driven methodologies for health and social connection in cities. She received her Master’s in Architecture from Tongji University in 2018 and her Ph.D. from Aarhus University in 2022.
“I was trained as an architect and urban designer, so throughout my education and career I’ve been focused on finding ways to measure aspects of the urban environment that are typically unmeasurable,” said Zhang. “My use of wearable and other innovative technologies to measure human exposure to environmental risk has been at the center of my research.”
Through watch-style trackers and body-mounted cameras, Zhang can track a subject’s movements in the built environment, know what kind of environment they’re exposed to in real-time, and even know their physiological stress level as they move throughout a city. These tools provide insight into pedestrian movement patterns, human health, and understanding the human experience within the urban landscape.
“In the early days of my research, I would utilize surveys to understand the experience of subjects within the urban environment, but now I’m able to gather that data in the real world,” said Zhang. “Not only is this process more efficient, but it also provides more quantitative data that leads to better solutions, as the subject’s real-time response provides insight that otherwise would have been excluded through surveys.”
Zhang conducts research through her Urban Technology, Observation & Practice Lab (U.TOP), where she works with graduate students and faculty from across UF as well as other institutions on various projects. She’s currently collaborating with the UF School of Architecture to run micro-climate simulations on low-coast sensor data and partnering with other global universities and institutions on projects like mobile device health research, which uses smartphones to alert pedestrians to potential health risk exposure. These will help Zhang understand how environmental changes like temperature, noise, and air quality affect humans in an urban environment, allowing for solutions to be found before these effects occur in the real world.
Graphic from Zhang’s collaborative study “Assessing the association between overcrowding and human physiological stress response in different urban contexts: a case study in Salzburg, Austria”.
In a partnership with the UF Department of Landscape Architecture, Zhang is collaborating with Assistant Professor Jiayang Li to study the impact of green space on the wellbeing of residents within an urban environment. In another project with Assistant Professor Rui Liu from the M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management, she’s working on attaching AI wearables to robots as they move around urban areas. In her wider research, she utilizes AI tools to gather and analyze population data, seeing how chatbots can be used as moderators for surveys and data collection. URP’s strong foundation in Urban AI research was a major draw for Zhang as she considered where to pursue a faculty role.
“UF’s advancement of AI curriculum and URP’s focus on Urban AI is impressive,” said Zhang. “The faculty here are really pushing the boundaries of AI research within the planning field, so I knew I would have the resources I needed to expand my own research. Florida’s climate is also unique from anywhere I’ve been before, so coming here gives me the chance to explore new urban spaces.”
Having conducted AI research at institutions across the globe, Zhang emphasized the need to close the gap that exists in AI research between communities and institutions. In the near future, she aims to begin bridging that gap by collaborating with communities that lack the AI infrastructure that UF supports. In the face of rapid advancements in AI, Zhang wants to emphasize to her students that it’s a tool, not a replacement for smart and creative design.
“It’s important for students to learn how to thoughtfully leverage AI to strengthen their own design skills,” said Zhang. “I think it’s similar to the way computers changed our profession by bridging a gap between hand-drawn work and digital creation. AI should be seen as a tool that supports and enhances strong design thinking rather than be a supplement for it.”
Despite changes in her approach to urban planning over time, Zhang continues to maintain a strong focus on design principles, drawing on her background as an architect.
“If I hadn’t decided to be a professor, I would have been a designer,” said Zhang. “I was trained as an architect, so I take a design-forward approach to my work. This perspective helps me understand the intersection between urban health and urban design and how we can create cities that function as healthy and sustainable environments.”