Founded by the former president Chu Kochen, Institute of Urban and Regional Development in Zhejiang University has a long and glorious history. We now have 9 full-time faculty members with 2 full professors, 5 associate professors and 2 lecturers. Our faculty members are educated and trained by China’s top academic institutions and world-renowned universities, and they specialize in a wide range of areas and cover a variety of disciplines, including Human Geography, Economic Geography, Physical Geography, and Urban Planning and Design. In particular, the research interest of our faculty members focuses on industrial clusters and regional development, high-tech industries and firm innovation, e-commerce adoption and rural development,land use and planning, tourism, tectonic and fluvial geomorphology, and applications of GIS and remote sensing techniques in the investigation of natural resource and environment.

Our faculty members have undertaken lots of research projects and achieved a research funding of 4-6 million yuan per year from not only NSFC but also governments of different levels. The research work widely appears in the peer-reviewed top journals nationally and internationally, such as Journal of Economic Geography, Economic Geography, International Business Review, Environment and Planning A, Urban Studies, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Professional Geographer, among many others.

The institute has a large number of high quality students recruited throughout the whole country. Students in our institute are required to learn both theories and practices. Based on this motto, the institute provides a lot of opportunities for students to learn from practice and to apply theories to reality. It also welcomes post-doctoral research in cooperation with professors for two or three years in chosen areas. The institute has frequently sent students to study abroad for a certain period of time under the financial support of the Ministry of Education. A large share of graduates from the institute continues their study in some world-renowned universities to pursue advanced degrees.