About me
Measuring the third dimension: of cities, and of the land beneath them.
I’m a PhD candidate in Cartography and GIS at Nanjing Normal University, working in Prof. Guoan Tang’s Digital Terrain Analytics team. I was trained to read terrain, and I still look at cities the same way: as surfaces with relief, structure and a history of how they were shaped. My research follows that third dimension at two scales: the built skyline of cities and the natural relief of the Earth’s surface.
From November 2024 to November 2025, I was a visiting scholar at the Urban Analytics Lab, National University of Singapore, working with Prof. Filip Biljecki.
Off the map, you’ll find me on a basketball court or behind a camera. One hour of coding a day keeps the bugs away 🐞, and I’m always happy to talk about collaborations.
3D Urban Analytics
Cities grow upward, yet most urban analysis stays flat. I estimate building heights footprint by footprint, read road slopes from street view imagery, and measure accessibility floor by floor in the vertical 15-minute city.
Geomorphometry
I read landforms from DEMs, from single basins to the whole globe, and map how people reshape the land surface, from terraces and check dams on the Loess Plateau to global relief classes, dune fields and alluvial fans.
2026 · International Journal of Geographical Information Science
Vision2Slope: estimating urban road slopes with street view imagery
Yang Chen, Zicheng Fan, Hao Li, Wufan Zhao, et al.
2025 · Cities
Vertical 15-minute city: Modeling urban density and functional mix with multi-source geospatial data
Yang Chen, Xin Yang, Xin Li, Ling Yang, et al.
2025 · Geomorphology
Characterizing spatial patterns and regionalization of anthropogenic landforms using multi-source geospatial data: Insights from Loess Plateau of China
Yang Chen, Xin Yang, Huangjunxi Fu, Chenrui Li, et al.
2024 · Sustainable Cities and Society
Refining urban morphology: An explainable machine learning method for estimating footprint-level building height
Yang Chen, Wenjie Sun, Ling Yang, Xin Yang, et al.
3MT Competition at the Second Academic Forum of Jiangsu Graduate Students
Presenting our Cities paper on the “Vertical 15-Minute City” concept through a 3MT talk at the Jiangsu Graduate Academic Forum.
Ending my one-year visiting to UAL
Reflecting on my experiences and contributions during my time at UAL.
One-year visiting to UAL is beginning
Funded by the China Scholarship Council, I started a one-year research visit at the Urban Analytics Lab, National University of Singapore.