Willow Lung, Ph.D., is Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), and a nationally recognized scholar of equitable community development, urban inequality, economic inclusion, suburban transformation, and urban policy. She is the Founding Director of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network, a national network of more than 200 organizations that helps diverse small businesses grow and thrive in place. At UMD, she also serves as faculty at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, and is the former director of the Urban Equity Collaborative.
Dr. Lung is the author of two books. Her latest book, The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge (University of California Press, 2024) investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, DC—one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States—have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment. Her first book, Trespassers? Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia (University of California Press, 2017), takes an intimate look at the everyday life and development politics in a Silicon Valley community as it transitioned from majority-White to majority-Asian American. Her research has also appeared in various books and journals, such as Journal of Urban Affairs and Journal of Planning Education and Research.
Dr. Lung’s work has been featured in various popular media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, National Public Radio, The New Republic, and Al Jazeera. It has been supported by various private foundations, including the Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and JPMorgan Chase, as well as government agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice. She has advised the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and National Economic Council on federal policy related to tenant protections and affordability.
Dr. Lung serves on boards of the Society for American City and Regional Planning Historians, Journal of the American Planning Association, and advisory committees for Poverty & Race Research Action Council and the Purple Line Corridor Coalition. She is Affiliate Faculty at American University's Metropolitan Policy Center and at the University of Maryland's Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, Department of American Studies, programs in Historic Preservation and Asian American Studies, and Maryland Population Research Center. She is a former Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholar, Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellow. She formerly served as a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program.
Dr. Lung teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in urban inequality and diversity, social planning, and community development. Prior to joining the UMD faculty, she worked professionally on master-planning projects in low-income communities, and with non-profits, public agencies, and private firms on issues of public housing and community development.
Dr. Lung holds a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.C.P. in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.A. in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from Stanford University.
