On March 16 2023, the Faculty of Business and Management (FBM) invited Dr. Zheng Chang to deliver the research seminar, titled “The socioeconomic impact of High-speed rail network to cities: Evidence from China”. This seminar includes 7 articles written by Dr. Chang which demonstrate how a research idea is created based on another. Also, it shows the research design and causal inference with data analytics. Dr. Chang used the Difference in Difference (DID) experiment to illustrate the socioeconomic and population impact of High-speed rail development.

Dr. Zheng Chang got his Doctor degree in Urban Planning and Public Policy at Harvard University. His research focuses on urban development in China and covers a wide range of urban subjects. Over the past few years, he has published over 20 papers in peer-review international journals. Before joining UIC, he worked at the City University of Hong Kong. He is also a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting scientist at ETH Zurich.

This seminar was held offline. In the beginning, Dr. Chang introduced the development of high-speed rail from Japan and EU countries to China. Then he explained that the objective of the Chinese Government in improving the development of high-speed rail is to “connect all cities with a population of more than 500,000 with high-speed rail, shortening travel time between adjacent megacities to 3-4 hours, and within urban agglomerations, travel time in adjacent cities is no more than 2 hours as well". Using the Difference in Difference experiments, it comes to the following three conclusions. Firstly, high-speed rail has promoted the process of urbanization, bringing more people from suburbs to urban cities. Secondly, Urbanization increases the demand for houses, rising the housing price. Lastly, high-speed rail moved out of manufacturing firms, which improves the air quality of the Urban area. Moreover, Dr. Chang came up with more ideas for further analysis, including Urban inequality, Financial sustainability as well as Urban innovation.

During the Question and Answer session, a lot of questions have been raised. Dr. Chang Zheng also answered and discussed all the questions.