Deland Chan
Adjunct Lecturer
Deland Chan is an educator, researcher, and urban planner. Her work aims to bridge the fields of urban studies, sustainability transitions, and human-centered design to understand urbanization pathways and cities as the future home to over two-thirds of humanity. She believes in working across disciplines to find common ground and share expertise.
As former Director of Community Engaged Learning in the Program on Urban Studies at Stanford, Deland taught project-based courses open to undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines that focus on sustainable cities and human-centered design. In 2014, she co-founded the Stanford Human Cities Initiative to create an interdisciplinary community of urban scholars and practitioners. She serves as an academic adviser for Urban Studies majors in the Urban Sustainability concentration and is active in mentoring First-Gen and/or Low-Income students.
Prior to Stanford, Deland worked as a Senior Planner at a community development corporation in San Francisco with a focus on transportation and land use planning. Her work resulted in capital improvements for a streetscape project, a pedestrian master plan for the Chinatown neighborhood, and a community-based urban planning youth training program called the Chinatown Urban Institute.
Areas of Focus: Sustainability transitions; land use and transportation planning; participatory planning; design thinking and human-centered design; emerging technologies in cities and innovation studies